Consumer Financial Protection Bureau update
David Dayen at The Intercept points us to the latest on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:
On Tuesday night, he (Trump)stood before the nation and boasted about the lowest unemployment rate on record for African-Americans. But just hours before his State of the Union address, his lieutenant and handpicked head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Mick Mulvaney, told staff in an email that he was seizing control of the unit responsible for policing anti-lending-discrimination laws.
CFPB Acting Director Mulvaney, in a previously unreported move, said that he would be putting the Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity, or OFLEO, under his direct control, startling consumer protection and civil rights advocates, and raising concerns that the office would be unable to carry out its mission — and that, indeed, that was the very purpose of the shift.
Dailykos also reports:
There’s your clue right there. It’s the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, not the Chase Bank Protection agency. Redefining the Bureau is part and parcel of Mulvaney’s job—he’s been put in charge of destroying it. Moving the Fair Lending office under Mulvaney’s direct control is clearly a move to neuter any enforcement power.
This is after he zeroed out the Bureau’s budget. Literally. He sent a funding request for $0 to the Federal Reserve. Clearly, he’s intending to bankrupt the agency, using up the $177 million it currently has on hand and to let it wither away. So that the consumers of this country—with a special emphasis on people of color—can be preyed upon by lenders again.
Mulvaney won’t let it wither away until he’s undone everything it did while Cordray was running the Bureau….i’ve been seeing at least a couple reversals of regulations every week since he’s been in charge…
like they say, this was a great country before Roosevelt, and they’re going to make it great again…
Dan,
I’m don’t think you’re a bit surprised by this or all the other still pending changes in federal gov’t under the new right (nor am I) , but thanks for keeping us all informed as it unravels.
Reminds me strongly of libertarian laissez-fair objectives now being implemented in real terms. Tearing down the power of the federal gov’t (e.g. “small gov’t, and “anti-federalism”) to regulate anything but that which suits the aristocracy of white supremacists. All under the authority of the Constitutional terms and conditions.