If you missed it, Saturday’s Savvy Consumer column gave a bit of background on the fight that’s brewing in Washington over a proposed federal agency to regulate the financial-services industry, including banks and credit card companies.

Last week, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., introduced legislation supported by the White House that would create the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. It would have regulatory authority over the financial services industry that currently is spread over several federal agencies long accused of being too sympathetic to the companies they’re supposed to police.

Supporting the establishment of the new agency are scores of consumer groups and unions; rallying against it are the industries that the new agency would regulate.

There have been some developments in this story since I wrote the column, including:

• MarketWatch notes that, left outside of the CFPA’s regulatory penumbra would be “common consumer financial products, such as mutual funds and many types of insurance.”
• Dow Jones reports that industry groups “are considering running ‘Harry and Louise’-style ads to sway public opinion” against the proposed CFPA.
• Federal appeals court judge and public intellectual Richard Posner argues in the Atlantic that consumers would be better served by scrapping plans for the new agency and centralizing the broad authority it would have within the Federal Trade Commission.
• And, as I’m writing this post, I’ve received from the (pro-CFPA) Center for Responsible Lending this damning report on the status quo: Neglect and Inaction: An Analysis of Federal Banking Regulators’ Failure to Enforce Consumer Protections.

Tomorrow, politicians get their chance to chime on the proposed agency. The Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to conduct a hearing on the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and the issue will likely come up in a scheduled hearing on consumer protection by the House Commerce Committee.