Category Archives: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Why Free-Marketers (and Others) Should Support Keeping the CFPB Complaint Database Public

by Jeff Sovern Earlier this week, Acting BCFP Director John Michael Mulvaney made statements suggesting that he was going to keep complaints to the Bureau secret.  Here's the quote, as reported by Rachel Witkowski in The American Banker: “I don’t see anything in here that says I have to make all of this public,” he […]

Guy Who Goes by Nickname “Mick” Doesn’t Want CFPB Known by Nickname

by Jeff Sovern Acting CFPB Director John Michael Mulvaney, known as "Mick," has been making a big deal about the fact that the name of the CFPB, or Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Dodd-Frank Act is the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (or BCFP), even asking that the Associated Press change its stylebook accordingly. […]

Hudson Cook Partner Worries that Trump Administration Will Miss Chance to Name Permanent Pro-Industry CFPB Director

by Jeff Sovern Hudson Cook partner Allen Denson has written an op-ed for the American Banker, Clock's ticking: White House should name a permanent CFPB director, in which he expresses fear that the Democrats will capture the Senate in the fall, with the result that Democrats will have a say, through the confirmation process, on whom the […]

What Are We To Make of the CFPB’s Billion Dollar Wells Fine?

by Jeff Sovern As Allison posted earlier, the CFPB has levied a $1 billion fine on Wells.  Some first reactions: A person inclined to give acting director Mulvaney the benefit of the doubt might say that this shows that the Bureau is keeping Mr. Mulvaney's promise to enforce consumer financial protection laws vigorously when that […]

Senate Likely to Vote to Rescind CFPB Indirect Auto Guidance

The Senate voted, 50-47, to debate whether to use the Congressional Review Act to rescind the CFPB Indirect Auto Guidance. As it is unlikely that a senator would vote both to debate the issue and retain the Guidance, that almost certainly means the Senate will vote to block the Guidance when it votes, probably tomorrow, on […]

My Suspicion About Why Mulvaney Has Dismissed Only One of Cordray’s CFPB Cases But Isn’t Bringing New Ones

by Jeff Sovern I have now listened to the Senate Banking Committee hearing at which Mr. Mulvaney testified about the CFPB (I still haven't heard the House Financial Services Committee hearing). I'm still trying to make sense of Mulvaney's claims about enforcement, which strike me as hard to reconcile. On the one hand, Mulvaney complained […]

Reports on Mulvaney’s Testimony Before the House Financial Services Committee

Mulvaney's written testimony is here. InsideArm.com has detailed coverage here. The LA Times story is here. Excerpt: Mulvaney acknowledged that although the bureau had averaged opening one new enforcement action a week under Cordray, he had launched none since taking over. That triggered astonishment from Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.). "Are you telling me that every […]