Mick Mulvaney.REUTERS/Carlos Barria
- The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is considering changing a rule so it’s easier for payday lenders to take more of people’s money.
- This after the White House took over the agency and installed Mick Mulvaney as director.
- Despite railing against the banks during his campaign, The GOP has been easing regulation on Wall Street since Trump was elected president.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is about to make business easier for loan sharks.
Which is to say, the agency is going to re-write a regulation that made it easier for pay-day lenders — lenders who charge high interest fees on short term loans — to keep mostly poor Americans in cycles of debt.
The CFPB, created by Dodd-Frank legislation during the financial crisis, is tasked with keeping Americans safe from predatory behavior in the financial services industry. It’s supposed to keep Wall Street from eating our lunch — as it has since, and will likely do again. However, at the end of last year it was taken over by the Trump administration in something of a bloodless coup.
And now, it is governed by Mick Mulvaney. And while Mulvaney did say he wouldn’t “light the agency on fire,” he said absolutely nothing about completely reshaping it to reflect the Trump administration’s deregulatory, Wall Street friendly agenda.
We should note here that when Mulvaney was a Congressman, financial firms backed his campaign with hundreds of thousands in donations.
Investment firm Raymond James called the agency’s latest move “a win for payday loan companies and other small dollar consumer lenders… The existing payday rule was set to become effective today and require compliance as of August 19, 2019. The rule covers payday, vehicle title, and certain high-cost installment loans.”
The old rule simply limited the amount of money or times an individual could borrow from these companies.
Now personally, I have a hard time believing that it’s pay day lenders who come to mind when Americans worry about victims of onerous government regulations. But that’s just me.
It’s also seems highly unlikely they think of Equifax, the credit rating agency that was hacked last year, or Wells Fargo, the bank that scammed millions of Americans by doing everything from opening fake accounts in their name to charging people illegal fees to get lower mortgage rates.
And yet, last October Republicans rolled back rules that made it easier for consumers to sue financial firms like Equifax and Wells Fargo.
And Mulvaney is reviewing the Wells Fargo’s fine for mortgage abuses to see if it’s too harsh, according to Reuters.
The financial crisis was 10 years ago this year. Only ten.
Leave a Reply
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
