Tag: Consumer FInancial Protection Bureau

How The Supreme Court May Enable Trump To Reshape Government

An obscure case before the Supreme Court has the potential to reshape the federal government in a fundamental way. If conservative activists get their wish, President Donald Trump — and any president that comes after him — will have even more power to bend federal agencies to his will.

The case is Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency that was the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). As part of her desire to free the mandate of consumer protection from the political winds, winds that are frequently at the backs of powerful business interests, Warren ensured that the director of the bureau couldn’t be removed by the president from the post except under extraordinary circumstances. Unlike the members of the Cabinet, then, the directorship wouldn’t be expected to change hands with every new president, and a business-friendly president couldn’t remove an aggressive director without good cause.

It’s this feature of the bureau’s structure that Seila Law, a firm being investigated by the CFPB, sought to challenge in arguments before the court on Tuesday. The firm argues that the independence of the bureau from the presidency violates the Constitution. This argument relies on an idea common in conservative legal thought: that the president has sole and unmediated authority over executive branch agencies. Inherent in this authority, they say, is the power to fire executive branch officers. Continue reading.

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to limit CFPB’s independence

The Trump administration is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to give the president more control over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency that regulates mortgages and credit cards.

Asking the court to take up a pending appeal, Trump administration lawyers said the Constitution requires that the president be allowed to fire the agency’s director for any reason. The 2010 law that set up the CFPB says the agency’s director can be removed only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

The administration’s position increases the chances the court will take up the issue in the nine-month term that starts in October. A ruling would come by June, months before the 2020 presidential election.

View the September 17 article from Bloomberg on The Los Angeles Times website here.

Mick Mulvaney’s Master Class in Destroying a Bureaucracy From Within

The C.F.P.B. was created to protect Americans from predatory lenders after the financial crisis. President Trump’s new chief of staff took it apart on his way to White House.

One rainy afternoon early in February 2018, a procession of consumer experts and activists made their way to the headquarters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington to meet Mick Mulvaney, then the bureau’s acting director. The building — an aging Brutalist layer cake, selected by the bureau’s founders for the aspirational symbolism of its proximity to the White House, one block away — was under renovation, and so each visitor in turn trudged around to a side entrance. Inside the building, Mulvaney had begun another kind of reconstruction, one that would shift the balance of power between the politically influential industries that lend money and the hundreds of millions of Americans who borrow it.

Three months earlier, President Trump installed Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina, as the C.F.P.B.’s acting director. Elizabeth Warren, who helped create the agency in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, envisioned it as a kind of economic equalizer for American consumers, a counter to the country’s rising structural inequality. Republicans had come to view her creation as a “rogue agency” with “dictatorial powers unique in the American republic,” as the party’s 2016 platform put it. In Congress, Mulvaney had established himself as an outspoken enemy of the bureau, describing it, memorably, as a “joke” in “a sick, sad kind of way” and sponsoring legislation to abolish it.

Continue reading “Mick Mulvaney’s Master Class in Destroying a Bureaucracy From Within”

How Trump appointees curbed a consumer protection agency loathed by the GOP

Mick Mulvaney said he expected to be at the CFPB a short time, until Pres. Trump picked a permanent director. In less than a month, he’s turned it’s mission sharply in a new direction. Credit: Jabin Botsford, The Washington Post

Mick Mulvaney struck a jovial tone as he introduced the political appointees who would run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. One was nicknamed Dreamboat, he said in an email. Another was Mumbles. A third had been a “Jeopardy!” contestant.

“They are really great people,” Mulvaney, the acting director, wrote in a holiday message to the agency’s 1,600 staffers last December.

The levity now seems like a cruel joke to career officials.

View the complete December 4 article by Robert O’Harrow, Jr.’ Shawn Boburg and Renae Merle on The Washington Post website here.

Top 3 Things To Know About Trump’s Disastrous CFPB Nominee

This week, the Senate is expected to vote on Trump’s pick to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Kathy Kraninger. Here are the top three things to know about her nomination:

A CONTINUATION OF MULVANEY: Kathy Kraninger has been working closely under Mulvaney at OMB and followed his lead by recommending a massive budget cut to the CFPB.

Reuters: “The agency’s acting head Mick Mulvaney is also the OMB chief and works closely with Kraninger. He took over at the CFPB from President Barack Obama’s appointee Richard Cordray in November, and the agency has since dropped cases against payday lenders, shelved proposed regulations and overhauled some units.”

Continue reading “Top 3 Things To Know About Trump’s Disastrous CFPB Nominee”

CFPB lets payday lender accused of stealing millions off the hook

The following article by A.P. Joyce was posted on the mic.com website April 20, 2018:

Interim CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced in its latest report to Congress that it would be dropping its enforcement actions against a business group that is accused of running an international online payday lending scheme.

The group, known as NDG Financial Corp, is accused of violating U.S. usury laws, and employing deceptive and abusive practices to collect from borrowers. Continue reading “CFPB lets payday lender accused of stealing millions off the hook”

3 Ways Trump has Weakened the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

The following article was posted on the TrumpAccountable.org website December 23, 2017:

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was one of the most important ways the Obama administration responded to the financial meltdown of 2008. Under Elizabeth Warren’s leadership, the CFPB did important work holding banks and businesses accountable for practices that harmed American consumers. The large banks and financial services companies proved in 2008 that they were incapable of policing themselves and that they were acting in the interest of their shareholders and executives rather than the interests of average Americans.

Here are three recent changes to the CFPB that indicate that it will no longer be nearly as strong a force for average Americans: Continue reading “3 Ways Trump has Weakened the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau”

Is the Consumer Bureau ‘Unaccountable’ and Ineffective?

The following article by Linda Qiu was posted on the New York Times website November 28, 2017:

President Trump named his budget chief, Mick Mulvaney, as the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in a bid to take control of the agency just hours after its departing leader had taken steps to install his own choice for acting chief. Credit Carlos Barria/Reuters

WASHINGTON — Alongside a legal showdown over who will lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency also faces renewed criticism — including from the official overseeing the bureau as the case is being considered.

Confusion has reigned as two acting directors have claimed the title: Mick Mulvaney, who was appointed by President Trump, and Leandra English, designated by the departing director of the bureau, Richard Cordray, as his successor.

Ms. English, the deputy director of the consumer bureau, filed a lawsuit on Sunday seeking to block Mr. Mulvaney, the White House budget chief, from taking control. A federal judge on Tuesday said that Mr. Mulvaney could lead the agency. Continue reading “Is the Consumer Bureau ‘Unaccountable’ and Ineffective?”

Why we need to save the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

The following article by Professors Jeff Sovern, Ann L. Goldweber and Gina M. Calabrese was posted on the Conversation website October 25, 2017:

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray testifies on Capitol Hill in 2013. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Republicans in Congress and the White House have been very blunt about their desire to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – and the threats to it are mounting.

The agency was launched in 2011 in the aftermath of the financial crisis as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The goal was to protect consumers from deceptive or misleading practices in the financial industry.

At the moment, Republicans seem focused on blocking CFPB rules they don’t like, such as one that would have prevented the use of arbitration clauses in financial contracts, making it easier for people to band together to sue banks for wrongdoing. Separately, the Trump administration has been heavily critical of the CFPB, and its director is said to be considering leaving before his term expires next July, which would allow the president to pick his replacement. Continue reading “Why we need to save the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau”