If you aren’t yet concerned about Senator Christopher Dodd’s “regulatory reform” bill, S. 3217, the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010, it’s time to gear up and make sure your unrepresenting representatives know this is anything but a way to restore or stabilize America.

Among its fast and loose partisan games with so-called federal financial “oversight’, one thing that will hit you right in the supposed privacy of your own home is one of the “responsibilities” that will be assigned to that nefarious Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.  This unaccountable group will be tasked with monitoring consumer financial patterns and, “implement and, where applicable, enforce Federal consumer financial law.” Specifically, they will have the authority to “gather information and activities of persons operating in consumer financial markets.”

What does this mean?  It means that every cent any individual deposits will be linked to the census-based personal address of each customer and to their deposit at the corresponding financial institution. And these unaccountable bureaucrats will be permitted to share this data with whomever they wish.

Yes, Virginia, when you deposit that gift of birthday cash from Auntie Em and later use your debit card to buy a mocha latte at Starbucks, the Feds will be tracking these transactions and can then sell that information to big businesses and Wall Street, making you a target for advertising and the like.  And not only does this lend itself to the federal government playing favorites with the private sector, forcing business in and out of geographic areas or to collapse altogether, it also contains enormous risk that all your personal data will fall into the wrong hands.

I don’t know what they’re drinking there in Dodd’s office, but common sense and true concern for American citizens ain’t it.