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Mulvaney Corrupts the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Jan. 17, 2018

Mulvaney Corrupts the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Statement of Bart Naylor, Financial Policy Advocate, Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division

Note: Today Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s temporary pick to head the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, announced a wall-to-wall review of the agency’s “enforcement, supervision, rulemaking, market monitoring, and education activities.” On Tuesday, Mulvaney announced that he would reconsider the recently finalized payday lending rule.

Trump agent Mick Mulvaney is inviting financial predators to help him dismantle consumer safeguards so that payday lenders and Wall Street banks once again can prey on millions of Americans.

Under the direction of Obama appointee Richard Cordray, the U.S. Consumer Financial Projection Bureau (CFPB) returned more than $12 billion to some 28 million victims and undertook painstaking, thoughtful analysis before finalizing sensible rules. That’s why Congress created the CFPB: to protect consumers. That’s why they named it the “consumer protection” bureau.

Now, financial firms whose business models rely on scams and rip-offs, may defang the consumer agency and write rules that invite more lucrative deceptions. Look no further than yesterday’s announcement that Mulvaney will reconsider the payday lending rule, a sensible safeguard against debt traps, to see what’s in store.

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