Shield financial laypersons from predatory lenders
Since the global
of 2008, most countries have reformed their regulatory systems with the focus on better protection of financial consumers. Korea was no exception, but only on the surface. Deep inside the system, little has changed here.
Nothing shows this better than a report by the task force on reforming the regulatory regime released on Friday. It called for, among others, keeping the consumer protection agency within the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) instead of separating it into a new independent organization. A discussion of the past few years ended up as much ado about nothing.
The government will instead bolster the independence of the tentatively named “Financial Consumer Protection Agency” by giving it authority on budget and personnel management as well as its own inspection rights of financial service firms. The President, not the finance minister, will
its head, reflecting the importance of the agency and the job it will handle, a task force spokesman said.
This all sounds very nice. A closer look, however, reveals that all these are cosmetic changes for as long as the protection body remains under the control of the FSS and its upper organization, the Financial Services Commission (FSC).
Above all, it is
and unreasonable to put a consumer protection agency - whose foremost function is to check and fight against financial companies - under the control of regulatory agencies whose primary role is to defend and strengthen the financial industry. In exchange for allowing the FSS to retain a consumer protection department, the FSC, a government organ responsible for setting up regulatory policies, took away authority to
sanctions on problematic financial institutions.
So the two major regulatory bodies made a compromise in their turf war by compromising the main cause of reform - consumer protection.
What such continuation of the status quo means is clear, given the track records of the existing regulators. The so-called regulators did, or could, do nothing when managers in dozens of savings banks, a legal euphemism for credit unions, spent depositors’ money as their own pocket money. Nor did they know that the nation’s largest commercial banks colluded to furtively apply additional interests on their loans to individuals and small companies. One of them, Shinhan Bank, even went as far as to decide interest rates not by clients’ credit standing but by their schooling.
The protection of financial consumers is to guard them from increasingly
and/or fraudulent financial products in advanced countries, including the United States. In Korea, the regulators’ job can be done far more easily if only they don’t turn a blind eye to daylight robbery clear to anyone’s eyes. The reason for their failure is simple: the huge network of financial power maintained by industry-bureaucratic collusion called the “Mofia” - a term coined by combining MoF (Ministry of Finance) and Mafia, in which the regulators of financial firms today become their executives tomorrow.
Korea needs an independent consumer protection agency true to the name, run completely on a government’s budget and led by a strong pro-consumer leader, not a former financial bureaucrat, more than any other country in the world.
That was also one of President Park Geun-hye’s election pledges. Koreans can ill afford to wait three more years. They need it here, and right now.
This is The Korea Times editorial for Tuesday, June 25, 2013.
※ 다음에 나오는 문제들은 본 사설에 나오는 중요한 어휘들로 구성된 토익, 토플, 텝스 기출 및 예상 문제 입니다.
※ Choose the one word or phrase that best keeps the meaning of the highlighted part.
1. There was very little political
about the need for drastic measures to cope with an unprecedented financial crisis.
① controversy
② confusion
③ enterprise
④ examination
2. I intend to
that our committee appoint Peter as chairman, and I hope that you will second my motion.
① propose
② leave
③ immigrate
④ impress
3.Helen
John's awkward marriage proposal.
① rejected
② accepted
③ praised
④ scorned
4. In order to encourage exportation and discourage importation, the government must
import taxes.
① allow
② place
③ exempt
④ omit
5. Modern weaponry is
.
① crude
② simple
③ easily operated
④ very complicated
[해설 및 정답]
1. [번역] 전례가 없는 금융위기에 대처하기 위해 과감한 조치를 취할 필요성에 대해서는 정치적인
은 거의 없었다.
[어휘] contention 다툼, 투쟁; 경쟁; 언쟁, 논쟁
[정답] ①
2. [번역] 나는 우리 위원회가 피터를 의장으로 임명해야 한다고
하며 나는 여러분이 나 의 제안(동의<動議>, 발의)에 찬성해 주기를 바랍니다.
[어휘] impress 감동시키다, 이해시키다
3. [번역] Helen은 John의 어색한 청혼을
[어휘] mock 놀리다, 무시하다 scorn 경멸하다, 거절하다
[정답] ④
4. [번역] 수출을 장려하고 수입을 억제하기 위해, 정부는 수입세를
[어휘] exempt 면제하다 omit 빠뜨리다, 생략하다
[정답] ②
5. [번역] 현대적 무기는
다.