The Economist‘s blog features a lengthy critique of Elizabeth Warren’s call for a Financial Product Safety Commission, featured in her article “Unsafe at Any Rate” in Democracy Issue #5.

The blog post argues:

One hesitates to suggest the obvious–that there might be real differences in the way people use toasters and mortgages–but the thought lingers. After all, presumably the reason for regulating toasters is that it is very difficult for the average person to tell whether the wiring is faulty. Perhaps I am guilty of journalistic snobbery, but it doesn’t seem beyond the intellectual reach of the average person to figure out that adjustable rate mortgages can adjust upward; borrowers in Britain, where ARMs are the dominant mortgage type, have been coping with this conundrum for years.

Read the rest here.