The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau(CFPB) is an important agency. It was a part of the Dodd-Frank bill that passed in 2010 under Obama and was set up by Elizabeth Warren. Dodd-Frank was enacted after the wall street crash in 2008 as a way to get fix the economy and hold the big banks accountable so this doesn't happen again. The CFPB helps people who have been cheated by banks with mortgages and other investments. President Trump is against this bill. One of his promises is to repeal the bill. The Financial CHOICE act was passed through the house on June 8th. It repeals major parts of Dodd-Frank, and makes the law useless. Luckily it is not likely to pass the Senate to make it the President's desk in its current form.
The future of the CFPB is in question because Trump is so against it that he wants to get of the agency all together. Recently the head of the CFPB Richard Cordray has stepped down. This means that at some point Trump will appoint a new director of the agency. I don't trust him to appoint a competent person the head of the agency. In-fact I expect him to appoint the complete wrong person for the job. He has a history of doing this with other appointments such as Betsy DeVos and Jeff Sessions. He has already shown willingness to appoint somebody who is against the agency. He appointed Mick Mulvany to be the director of the agency. Someone who thinks that the agency is a "waste of time" according the New York Times.
The CFPB has done amazing things. It gives money back to people who have been cheated out of money by banks and other investment companies such as credit card companies and insurance companies. It was set up by Elizabeth Warren who is trying her best to defend the agency. It has given $11.9 billion dollars to 29 million consumers. It has handled 1.2 million complaints and 97% of consumers get there claims handled in a timely manner. The agency also makes sure that the information that these companies give out are easy for consumers to understand. It also stops mortgage companies from giving out claims with higher fees and rates. Basically they can't guide you to get a loan that gives them a higher commission. The agency has it's holes but at least it is to use the words of Elizabeth Warren "a cop on the beat". It needs refining instead of being gotten rid of.
The critics of the agency say that it is bad for banks because it doesn't give them the freedom to do riskier investments so it stops the banks from earning more money. It wouldn't be a watchdog agency if the banks liked what it was doing. So yes the banks don't like it, but that is a good thing in my eyes. Another part of Dodd-Frank is trying to break up the banks that were too big to fail. Basically they don't want the banks to be so huge that if they fail they crash the economy again. If the banks are doing risky investments with the consumers than when they fail the consumer fails the country fails as well. That was the purpose of the Glass-Steagall act was to separate the investment banking from the regular consumer banking. Dodd-Frank is a liter version of that. It needs more teeth but it's the start of something good.
There is a legal battle going on over who is the actual director of the agency. I am in no way a legal expert and am not pretending to be, this is just my opinion on what I have read and have heard. The two acts that are in conflict is the Dodd-Frank act itself and the Vacancy act. According the Vacancy Act the President can appoint someone to the head of an agency when there is a vacancy, unless there is already written into the law a succession plan. Dodd-Frank has a succession plan for the CFPB where the deputy director becomes the acting director until the President and congress appoint a new director. The woman named to head the agency is Leandra English, but the President appointed the head of the Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvany. On Monday they both showed up for work with Mulvany bringing doughnuts and telling them to ignore directives from English. English has sued Trump and Mulvany saying that according to Dodd-Frank she is the rightful director. I think that it is pretty clear that she is the interim director. According to the Vacancy Act if there is a plan in place than that takes precedent. Hopefully she wins the case before too much damage is done.
Keeps your eyes peeled for this one. The CFPB is an important agency that has done a lot of great work. Of course there are issues with which is why you are supposed to make it better. A lot of things in government don't work the best that they can. However, we need to make them better instead of getting rid of them. If we are going to be a government for the people then we need agencies that are going to look out for the people. We need the safety-nets so we can catch people as they fall on hard times. No one else is going to do it so the government needs to step in and do it. Agencies like this will do wonders for years to come if we can stop it being handicapped by Trump and Mulvany and the like than we will have a better country. This is not going to be easy but it is a fight that we can win in the public sphere. So make enough noise to make sure they know that we don't like this and will not vote for you if you keep doing things like this.
sources:
New York Times article about the legal battle.
Information on Dodd-Frank and the CFPB
the website for the CFPB
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