by Jeff Sovern The CFPB has posted online Interim Director Mulvaney's calendar for December and January. I can't tell how complete it is, but it has only a fraction of the number of items that former Director Cordray's calendar (also online at the same site) had for the months I randomly selected. Either Mulvaney is […]
Category Archives: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
by Jeff Sovern On Monday, I posted a link to Todd Zywicki's WSJ op-ed in which he accused Cordray's CFPB of pummeling consumers and wrote that "The pain was especially acute for low- and middle-income consumers who lost access to credit cards, faced higher bank fees and reduced access to free checking, and found it […]
by Jeff Sovern A student forwarded me the following email (I've omitted identifying information to protect the student's confidentiality): Good afternoon, Thank you for your interest in the CFPB’s Honors Attorney Program. Unfortunately we will not be extending offers for the program this year. Please keep the Bureau in mind as you plan your future […]
by Jeff Sovern George Mason's Todd Zywicki has an op-ed in the WSJ, The CFPB Could Be a Force for Good, in which he lays out his vision for what the CFPB should do and attacks what it did under Cordray. Zywicki is the only academic whose name has been bruited about as a potential Trump […]
Here, by Kate Berry (behind a paywall). The most potent weapon is, of course, the Bureau's UDAAP powers. Excerpt: [The Bureau's] vision statement unveiled as part of the new strategic plan dropped any reference to so-called UDAAP claims, suggesting that the agency will not use the Dodd-Frank authority as the same kind of blunt enforcement […]
by Jeff Sovern In a blog post Tuesday, I asked Am I the only one who thinks it's weird for a temporary and part-time CFPB director to create a five-year strategic plan? But as Barbara S. Mishkin pointed out in the Consumer Finance Monitor, the CFPB is obliged to issue a strategic plan this month by […]
by Jeff Sovern Last month, the Department of Justice issued a policy that as DOJ describes it in its announcement of the policy, "prohibits the Department of Justice from using its civil enforcement authority to convert agency guidance documents into binding rules." Times coverage is here. What implications does this have for consumer law? Strictly speaking, […]
by Jeff Sovern The CFPB issued a new strategic plan. I haven't had time to go through it myself, but Consumers Union is unhappy with it. Here's a quote from the CU statement: [The plan] signals that [the CFPB] will ease up on enforcement and investigations of the financial industry and identifies deregulation as a […]
by Jeff Sovern The Hill reports that the president's budget would subject the CFPB budget to the congressional appropriations process, which as we have noted in the past, would effectively give lobbyists power over the CFPB, even when the director is not beholden to the industry. I believe the budget is subject to the filibuster, […]
The report is here. This looks bad. This is the Golden Valley case in which the lender charged up to 950%. Here's an excerpt: Mulvaney declined requests for an interview. In an email, his press representative first said the decision to drop the Golden Valley lawsuit was made by "professional career staff" and not Mulvaney. […]