Moms,

The economic crisis we are in started one household at a time, with lenders who figured out that they could trick families with credit products that no one could read and that prevent any basic comparison shopping. And now the crisis is taking down American families, one household at a time, with job losses, a widening wave of foreclosures, and billions of lost savings. While economists talk about “the end of the recession,” for millions of families, hard times are getting harder. But we—moms—have a chance to do something about it.

I’ve been a member of MomsRising since it was born. I’m a grandmother now, and my two little granddaughters make me focus on Mom’s issues with more intensity than ever. The tricks are everywhere: The average check overdraft is $17, but the average fee for the check overdraft is $34. Used car dealers get kickbacks up to $3,800 for steering customers into higher-priced loans. Credit card companies calculate interest charges on money you have already paid back. We can stop the sale of deceptive credit. We can stop the hemorrhage of tens of billions of dollars on trick credit card penalties and interest rates, trick overdraft fees and trick car loan kickbacks. We can make credit markets work for us.

But first we should take a step back and think about context. Here is what went wrong and what we can do about it:

Mortgages, credit cards, car loans and the like used to be covered by basic safety rules, many of which were enforced by government agencies. Starting in the 1980s, Wall Street CEOs captured agencies that were supposed to regulate them, taking cops off the beat. They started funneling enormous resources into the political process so that they could rewrite the safety rules—and so they could make sure there wouldn't be any new cops watching out for families.

With no laws to hold them back, Wall Street changed its business model. Instead of selling families boring, safe credit cards and mortgages, it started selling products that appeared to have a low cost, but that were laden with tricks and traps that raked in the real money.

That went on for years, and the industry's tricks-and-traps business got more and more out of control. While the average credit card contract was a single page in 1980, today it is more than 30 pages long. Mortgages began to look like credit cards—with teaser rates, hidden fees and stacks of papers to be signed with no real chance to read them. If you haven’t been burned yourself by fine print, you surely have a close friend or family member who has been. And the result is less choice for consumers, more risk in the system, and innovation driven around the development of new tricks and traps rather than around serving customer preferences.

As we now know, the sale and re-sale of deceptive mortgages and other dangerous products went on to make trillions of dollars for Wall Street while bringing the economy to its knees. And when the industry's recklessness brought the biggest banks to the brink of collapse, Wall Street turned to the taxpayers for bailouts and guarantees, which put it right back into big profits and big bonuses.

Today, Congress is in the process of writing the final chapter of this narrative. Its financial regulatory reform legislation will determine the face of our economy for the next 50 years. And Congress is torn between two sides in a raging battle: families on one side and Wall Street on the other.

I believe that the clearest indication of whether families or Wall Street will win will be whether Congress acts to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). This consumer agency would put cops on the beat, regulatory cops with the tools to fix the broken credit market by putting an end to deceptive practices. It would empower families to make good financial decisions and put a cop back on the beat in Washington.

But the Wall Street CEOs now have the CFPA bottled up in the Senate. The proposal has made it through the House, and the President is ready to sign it, but we are all waiting for your Senator to make an important choice between your family and the big banks. The CEOs are whispering to the Senators that no one is watching, that they can vote with Wall Street and that no one will care.

This is where Moms come in.

I know how busy you are, but please make your voice heard. Please call your Senators. Please send an email. Please write an op-ed or letter to the editor to your local paper. Say you want a consumer watchdog that will cut out the tricks and traps that are putting families at risk. Announce loud and clear that you are paying attention to what is happening in Washington, and that you want to know whose side your Senators are on. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It just has to happen.

And it can happen especially quickly if you go to this link: http://www.change.org/affil/actions/view/tell_the_senate_we_need_financial_reform_now

The banks and the lobbyists have a lot of power in Washington, but they really might lose this time. Moms could make that happen.

Elizabeth