It’s obvious from the fight that’s going on in Congress over whether to even form a Consumer Protection Agency and where to put it that American consumers have a major problem: Namely, that collectively they don’t have even one pocket deep enough for Congress to fit in.

This is in stark contrast to the banking industry’s pockets, which in their depth rival the fabled Mindanao Deep in the Pacific Ocean.  Now those are pockets, buddy. Pockets that are certainly large enough and deep enough to accommodate any number of senators and representatives, not to mention candidates for those revered offices.

You would think from the so-called debate that is going on that consumers all over this country were not the ones who were grievously injured by banks run amok during the lead-up to the cataclysm now known as the Great Recession.  That these same consumers weren’t taken to the cleaners by mortgage bankers.  That they didn’t have their clocks cleaned by predatory credit card practices that show how truly innovative banks can be.  That they weren’t harmed—and are still not being harmed—by the lack of credit availability from banks that are getting funds supplied by the Fed at next to no cost, but are using those same funds to trade for their own advantage.

And even more ironic, within the context of the wholesale amnesia that has seemingly taken hold of Congress since the events of September 2008, it is now the banks that are making the case that they need protection from being over-regulated!

So, what is one “compromise” shaping up to protect consumers?  It is to put an agency with that responsibility within the precincts of the Federal Reserve Board. 

Yes, the Fed, that same agency whose myopia during the buildup of the housing bubble rivaled Mr. Magoo’s.  Yes, the Fed, which back in those days of high-flying financial recklessness seemed to have no clue about what kind of exotics those banks it was supposed to be regulating were using—and just how awfully much they were on the hook for.

As a consumer myself I find the idea of expecting the Fed to take my side against the banks more than faintly ludicrous.

So what’s going on here? Is it that since they did such a bad job the last time around we owe them one more shot to get it right?

I’m with Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who has nothing but scorn for the idea.  He told Politico recently, “It’s almost a bad joke.”

Unfortunately it wouldn’t be the first time that a bad joke ended up as law.  Think of the Bush tax legislation that let the estate tax disappear for the year 2010 only to be resurrected at 2001 rates in 2011.  Or think about the Medicare prescription drug bill with its notorious doughnut hole.  I could go on, but you get the point.

So, the bottom line as I see it is that no matter what Sen. Richard Shelby, the banking industry’s white knight, thinks, it is consumers who need protection and they need an independent agency to make sure it happens.  No joke.

What, you might ask yourself, would cause a health insurance company coming off a quarter where it had multi-billion dollar profits to slam individual policyholders with rate increases up to 39%?

Well, let’s see. 

Maybe the insurer is headquartered on Mars and is unaware that a debate to reform the health care system has been raging in the United States for the past year.  And maybe this insurer was unaware that this debate has witnessed health insurers taking more than their share of abuse.

Or maybe the insurer is headquartered in the U.S. but is in need of a gigantic corporate hearing aid to assist in overcoming a massive condition of tone deafness.

Or maybe the insurer is just plain arrogant and doesn’t give a hoot about how this plays out in the larger world.

OK, maybe it’s none of these.  Maybe there were good reasons for the move and let’s concede them all.  So, concede the point that those billions in profit were largely a one-shot deal arising from a sale of a business.

And concede that the state’s regulations and the recession were causing the insurer to lose money on its individual business.  And concede that medical costs are skyrocketing, leaving premiums breathless to catch up in many cases.

Even with all those valid reasons, I still have to ask what the impulse is that causes one to offer up oneself as a piñata.  For surely, the company, no matter how tone deaf, had to have had some inkling of the uproar its pricing actions would cause.

After experiencing a year of hearing insurers railed at for unrestrained increases in premiums that are crushing businesses and consumers, how on earth do you go ahead and up the ante for some customers by 39%?

Was the company really clueless enough to expect that politicians would pass up the opportunity to relaunch a crusade that was showing signs of flagging?  Do lions pass up a nice big chunk of red meat when it’s thrown their way?

So, here’s my advice to the CEO of the company.  Don’t blame your actuaries, who I’m sure had very good reasons for justifying these increases.  Do blame your PR people—they’re paid to know better and they let you down grievously.   

And do take some of the blame yourself.  You could have had enough courage to tell your shareholders that this was just not the time to become a poster child for the excesses of the health insurance business.

I certainly hope the rest of the business will take note of what happened here.  But it does make you wonder whether tone deafness has become so persistent a condition that insurers have stopped listening.

By this time we all know how very very difficult it is to get anything done in the U.S. Senate, so it is not surprising that Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., was upset about President Obama’s proposals regarding banks—what businesses they can or cannot be in under certain conditions and how big they should be.

One can understand the annoyance of the soon to be retired senior senator from the Nutmeg state who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.  After all, members of his committee have been paired off for months working on different facets of financial reform so that the Senate can have a bipartisan solution to hold up to the world.

Never mind that by the time Dodd’s committee finally puts something out, whatever the plan is will have taken longer to gestate than an elephant.  And the similarity, friends, is not likely to end there. 

So much time will have gone by that we will almost have forgotten what the impetus for financial reform was—and maybe that’s the point.  After all, banks are minting money again (although still not lending it), bank bonuses are in the pre-meltdown range (if not higher) and money from bank lobbyists is gushing. 

It’s obviously ‘What, me worry?’ time again in the good old U.S.A.

So what does the president do when these months-long negotiations between Banking Committee members are reaching a critical point?  He comes along and crashes the party.

I guess he didn’t realize just how delicate these negotiations are, how their fragility could be shattered by wanting too much from the legislation.

The New York Times quoted Dodd as saying that the administration was “’getting precariously close’ to excessive ambition for the legislation.” 

Dodd added: “I don’t want to be in a position where we end up doing nothing because we tried to do too much.”

While I feel your pain, senator, I’m also thinking that maybe the president has seen how unrewarding it has been to pretty much hand over major initiatives on health care reform and financial services reform to Congress.  Maybe he has seen the error of his ways and decided to start flexing a bit of executive power.

Maybe he just wants to get something done.  And let’s face it, that hasn’t seemed to bother you or your fellow committee members very much.