But buy a house or life insurance or use your credit card and you're on your own to find your way through pages of fine print full of loopholes and obfuscations.

The results can be catastrophic for individuals who are lured into mortgages at higher rates even when they are qualified for lower ones, or find themselves in suffocating debt. It is many of those very same mortgages that brought the world's financial system to the brink of the abyss. Abusive practices of credit-card companies may keep many Americans from participating in an economic recovery, should one ever materialize.

That's why the proposal for a stand-alone Consumer Financial Protection Agency is the most promising part of a restrained financial-regulation overhaul proposed last week by President Obama. Envisioned as a Consumer Product Safety Commission for financial products, it would consolidate oversight of mortgages, credit cards, insurance and other loans that now is spread across seven government agencies.

That is, if it's not diluted by Congress.

Current product safeguard means that ordinary Americans don't have to be electricians to find safe toasters. They don't need to be engineers to be sure stepladders don't collapse. In the same way, a Consumer Financial Protection Agency would mean you wouldn't need an MBA to spot "choking hazards" and "toxic materials" in financial products.

Such an agency would ensure that, if there is a conflict between protecting consumers and making profits -as there often is now -consumers will have a government agency that is unquestionably on their side.

For example, the agency could make it standard practice to offer every consumer a fixed rate, 30-year mortgage - "plain vanilla" in the parlance of the industry - along with other riskier loans. It could demand an end to the hidden fees embedded in the labyrinthine agreements now used by credit-card companies, and force simple, concise language describing costs and penalties. And, as the proposal stands now, CFPA would stop financial institutions from using their federal charters to avoid more stringent state laws, as they do now.

Not surprisingly, banks and business wasted no time in announcing their opposition. With all the brazenness of the Dan Aykroyd character in those early "Saturday Night Live" skits - the guy who couldn't see the problems with toys called "Bag o' Glass" or "Johnny Human Torch" - representatives of banks and business came out foursquare against consumer protection. They see the obvious: Effective regulations will cut into their huge profits. We're encouraged that 200 groups representing consumer interests have joined to form an umbrella organization, Americans for Financial Reform (http://ourfinancialsecurity.org), to push back against the onslaught of lobbyists brandishing their tired warnings of a thwarted free market and reduced credit for low-income people if they aren't allowed to continue business as usual.

We've learned from sad experience that a Consumer Financial Protection Agency is necessary not only to end the abuses that led to the current economic crisis, but to protect us from the next Bag o' Scams to come along. *