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 harder and costlier to obtain mortgages, especially as first-time homebuyers." It is interesting to contrast Zywicki's view with TransUnion's report yesterday that Consumer Credit Market Concludes 2017 on a High Note which explains that the consumer credit market is seeing a "strong performance across multiple credit products. * * * most indicators point to a healthy credit market * * *." TransUnion reports that auto loans, credit card loans, mortgages, and personal loans are all up by 2.5% to 7.5%. Of course, many factors contribute to increased borrowing, and we can't know what would have happened if there had been no CFPB. TransUnion was speaking about the consumer credit market generally while Zywicki was focused more on low- and middle-income borrowers. Still, the picture Zwyicki painted is very different from the TransUnion's findings.