I was honored to join President Obama today at the White House where he spoke on "creating the ground rules (for the delivery of fair and reasonable financial services), expanding choice, and rewarding private sector innovation and competition.” Given Operation HOPE's and my 17-year plus mission around financial literacy education as a fundamental civil right, and teaching what I call “the language of money” as a progressive new American value and a global “silver rights” issue, I felt compelled to issue a statement of support around President Obama’s call for make-sense consumer protection. On the other side of this global crisis, and building on fundamental consumer protections, I believe that making sure that the next generation is financially literate, is the only real way that we ensure that this crisis never happens again.
We believe that consumer protection ultimately needs to address the issue that helped to cause the crisis -- regulating the largely unregulated financial service space, including unregulated and under-regulated mortgage bankers, mortgage brokers and other alternative financial service providers, as well as mainstream institutions. We believe that the ultimate answer should support consumer protection, a new and serious focus on financial literacy, encourage fair and reasonable access to capital, and help to support what we call “good capitalism” -- or a free enterprise and capitalism that uplifts, includes and empowers the poor and the under-served. We also believe that consumer protection should be based on a fair and broad-based federal standard, providing a baseline of acceptable national best practices, encouraging innovation and the fair provision of credit.
I also believe that this crisis did not represent so much a failure of free enterprise and capitalism, but rather the failure of greed. Done well, these consumer protections will help to curb abuses and predatory practices, and also help honest innovation and good capitalism to flourish.
Operation HOPE has served more than one million individuals, including the poor and underserved impacted by Hurricane Katrina, middle income and working class Americans ravaged by the mortgage subprime crisis, under-served communities with little access to mainstream financial services, and children who receive little to no financial literacy education in school or college.
John Hope Bryant is the founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, vice chairman of the U.S. President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy, as well as chairman of the Council Committee on the Under-Served,financial literacy advisor to the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum, a Young Global Leaders for the World Economic Forum, and author of LOVE LEADERSHIP; A New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass), which debuted in August, 2009, #8 in the CEO Reads Top 10 Best Seller List.
About Operation HOPE, Inc.
Operation HOPE is America's leading nonprofit social investment banking and financial literacy empowerment organization. With more than 400 private sector partners, 1500 nonprofit organizations and schools, and 100 government partners in 68 major U.S. cities as well as South Africa, HOPE has raised more than $500 million in its pursuit of educating, assisting and inspiring the next generation of global stakeholders. Through international initiatives and its three principal programs, Banking on Our Future (teaching school children about money), HOPE Coalition America (Mortgage HOPE Crisis Hotline, 1-888-388-HOPE, financial emergency preparedness and disaster relief), and Walk-In HOPE Centers (loans, bill pay, computer literacy, understanding banking principles), Operation HOPE has delivered services to more than one million low-wealth individuals and assumed the responsibility of piloting the Silver Rights Movement towards making free enterprise and capitalism relevant to all underserved communities. To learn more about HOPE, visit www.operationhope.org. or read our blog at www.operationhope.org/blog.
Contacts:
Operation HOPE
Sherry T. John, 213-891-2908
sherry.john@operationhope.org
