Author Archives: Jeff Sovern

CFPB Director Cordray’s CNBC Interview

Here.  Excerpt: [John] Harwood: The Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial, said your agency is lawless. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who is an independent-minded senator, refers to you as King Richard. People say, "He's a dictator." What do you say? Cordray: First of all, I think it's completely ill-founded. There's never specifics in those kinds […]

WSJ: Key GOP Lawmaker: Commission Could Be Compromise in CFPB Overhaul

Remember how House Financial Services Committee Chair Jeb Hensarling said last month that he wanted to change the CFPB's structure to one headed by a single director reporting to the president?  Well, now the WSJ is reporting that Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri, chair of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer […]

Paul Bland in HuffPo: House GOP’s Bill to Eliminate Nearly All Class Actions Would Encourage More Ponzi Schemes & Other Corporate Cheating

Here.  Excerpt: [E]nter Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-Corporate Lobbyist Heaven), with his ironically titled “Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act,” which passed through the House Judiciary Committee two weeks ago. Its passage was a remarkable feat of avoiding public notice or debate, with Goodlatte ramming through the legislation in the middle of the night, voting down […]

What Vast Experience? Heritage Foundation Report: FTC Should Absorb CFPB Powers, Citing FTC’s Supposed “vast regulatory experience in . . . consumer financial markets”

by Jeff Sovern Here.  Here's something they say about transferring the Bureau's authority to the FTC:  Transferring all federal consumer protection authority to the Federal Trade Commission, the agency with vast regulatory experience in assessing practices affecting consumer financial services markets, would dramatically improve the federal regulatory framework for consumer financial protection. Maybe Heritage should have paid […]

Texas’s Angie Littwin Provides an Example of an Op-ed that Can be Written for Any State to Show How the CFPB Benefits Consumers in That State

In the Dallas Morning News.  The headline is Texans need to tell Ted Cruz and Jeb Hensarling to keep the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is an excellent op-ed and could serve as a template for use in drafting op-eds for other states.  Excerpt: Thanks to the bureau, Texas-based EZCORP had to stop illegally collecting debts […]

WSJ: Competing Priorities Bog Down Efforts to Quickly Roll Back Dodd-Frank

Here (behind paywall). House Financial Services Committee Chair Jeb Hensarling says the Financial Choice Act will be reintroduced in the "weeks to come" (which is already later than some earlier statements had it); the Senate Banking Committee still has presidential nominations to consider; both Houses face deadlines on some matters, such as the expiration of […]

Squires & Kirsch in HuffPo: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Past, Present, and Future

Here. Excerpt: In the wake of the recent election, the mind-boggling possibility of a return to the pre-crisis world of 2008 is now a real threat. That is precisely what would happen if Congress and the incoming Administration forget why the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was enacted and what the Consumer […]

More on the FTC: Politics and History

The WSJ recently published Companies Seek to Sway Trump Administration on FTC Choice (behind pay wall) about who the next FTC chair will be.  Google's rivals want Utah AG Sean Reyes, while acting chair Maureen Ohlhausen remains a possibility. Commissioner Ohlhausen is seen as more accommodating to Google  because of an earlier antitrust decision in which she […]