President Donald Trump likes everything about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — except its mission of protecting consumers from financial harm.
The CFPB was established by the Dodd-Frank Act in response to the financial crisis of 2008 and the severe recession that followed. Millions of Americans were harmed by reckless banking practices that knocked down the rafters of our economy. It’s taken the better part of a decade to recover.
It was clear at the time that no one was looking out for the interests of ordinary people — those who struggle to buy a home, send their kids to college or put away a little money for retirement. Without their knowledge, their mortgages or investment savings could be dealt by unscrupulous traders or gambled by shady hedge-fund investors.
Unfortunately, they fell for another scam. Billionaire President Trump is not a protector of the working class. He’s not on the side of the consumer but of the same Wall Street financiers and hedge-fund operators who landed on their feet after the financial meltdown — with their heels dug deeply into the backs of the people.
“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, has been a total disaster as run by the previous Administrations pick. Financial Institutions have been devastated and unable to properly serve the public. We will bring it back to life!” Trump tweeted last weekend after CFPB Director Richard Cordray stepped down, opening the door for the temporary appointment of Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget chief.
Mulvaney, under Trump’s direction, intends to turn the agency around in much the way that Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has made that agency friendlier to polluters than to the environment.
In six years, according to Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) of Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, the CFPB has responded to more than 1 million consumer complaints, reduced consumer debts by nearly $8 billion, provided protections from mortgage service and credit card fees, barred excessive interest rate hikes and limited predatory sales practices aimed at young consumers. Its enforcement action led to a $100 million penalty against Wells Fargo, whose employees were given incentives for opening phony accounts for customers without their knowledge.
On the contrary, consumers should be very worried. Today, who will hold financial institutions accountable for the security of personal, confidential information held by these financial institutions? Who will require financial managers to put consumers’ interests first, ahead of managers’ fees?
This is part of a pattern. This administration has tried to push more Americans off health care, offer huge tax breaks for the wealthy at the expense of Medicare and other safety-net programs, deny overtime to middle-class workers and allow financial institutions to insert fine print into contracts barring consumers from filing lawsuits if they have a grievance.
No one has said the Dodd-Frank bill couldn’t be improved, especially in regard to its regulation of small banks. But big financial institutions don’t need the government’s protection from average Americans.
These are the actions of an administration that sides with the powerful over the weak. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created because the powerful didn’t need help, but ordinary Americans did. That is still true today.
Find the article here.
