Category Archives: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Report finds administration’s consumer protection agenda has already cost Americans at least $18M

Here, from the Consumer Federation of America and Student Borrower Protection Center. The conclusion is based on elimination of fee limits, dropping of enforcement actions, and blocking payments to consumers, among other things.

Kathleen Engel: Here comes the latest race to the bottom in consumer finance

In the American Banker (behind paywall but available on Lexis). The essay is about how the CFPB is repeating the mistakes of the past. Excerpt: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is systematically removing guardrails designed to prevent abuses in the consumer finance market. With each retreat from its oversight obligations, the CFPB is expanding the opportunities for firms […]

Senate Parliamentarian rules zeroing out CFPB budget cannot be done through reconciliation

According to the parliamentarian, zeroing out the CFPB budget is subject to a filibuster and so requires 60 votes–which the proposal would surely not get. The Senate majority can overrule the parliamentarian, but doing so would diminish the filibuster’s significance and would set a precedent for when Democrats recapture the Senate but lack the 60 […]

Mike Calhoun: Why the Senate should protect funding for the CFPB

In the National Mortgage News (may be behind paywall). Excerpt: Through a law enacted by Congress, the CFPB receives an amount of up to 12% of the Federal Reserve’s inflation adjusted profits in 2009. This new Senate plan would reduce that amount to 0%, completely cutting off money the agency’s dedicated workers used to hold financial […]

Buy Now, Pay Later’s Perverse Incentives

Buy Now, Pay Later transactions (BNPL) are increasing dramatically. And for some folks, they are probably positive. But for others, BNPL can create significant problems. In case you don’t already know, the typical BNPL transaction enables consumers to purchase something by making four equal payments, one on the date of the purchase and the other […]

CFPB can’t fully unring the amicus bell, says district court judge

Some of the little work that the Administration has authorized the CFPB to undertake has been motions to withdraw amicus briefs filed in pending cases. In one case, though, a judge has in part rejected such a motion. In the case, Salom v. Nationstar Mortgage, the CFPB had filed an amicus brief  explaining “explains why […]

CFPB’s enforcement head says the administration has “no intention to enforce the law in any meaningful way.”

So reports Kate Berry in an American Banker article, CFPB’s top enforcement official, Cara Petersen, resigns. Berry writes: “It has been devastating to see the Bureau’s enforcement function being dismantled through thoughtless reductions in staff, inexplicable dismissals of cases, and terminations of negotiated settlements that let wrongdoers off the hook,” Petersen wrote in an email, […]