Elon and The Oligarchs Take on Consumer Protection
Billionaires will make less billions if they can't rip off their customers
As Trump’s Team of Terribles prepares to take over (and dismantle) America’s government, the real estate tycoon’s sugar daddy, Elon Musk, is offering lots of suggestions for what needs to go.
No surprise, Elon and the Oligarchs want to avoid accountability for any shady schemes that pilfer profits from the peasantry.
Christine Chin Zenner of Americans for Financial Reform explains what Musk and his cohort want: Full control, zero guardrails.
The billionaire Elon Musk and the California venture capitalist Marc Andreessen have started a debate about the role of government that we should be having — but it might not go the way they would hope. They don’t like government agencies that stop corporations like theirs from ripping off consumers.
Attacks by the two men resemble what Wall Street banks and predatory lenders have said since before the bureau came into existence in 2010. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon tried to strangle it in the crib during the congressional debate over its creation and now audaciously paints his $4-trillion, very profitable bank as a victim of regulation. Payday lenders took a case to the Supreme Court in an attempt to defund the agency (they lost). Most financial institutions belong to lobby groups that have sought to eviscerate the bureau.
No surprise that Elon, Trump, and pals cozy up to the legalized loan sharks from the payday loan industry.
These industries dislike the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau intensely because, bluntly, it does its job. Congress gave the bureau enforcement powers to stand up for consumers, and companies run or influenced by Musk and Andreessen have been on the receiving end. In one example from 2016, the agency sued a startup backed by Andreessen, Oakland-based LendUp, after it flouted federal law. Ultimately the bureau shut the company down in 2021 following repeated violations that included changing the terms of existing loans.
The CFPB has returned more than $20 billion to consumers - consumers ripped off by corporations attempting to defraud them. Consumers who were victims of aggressive, repeat-offending fraudsters like Wells Fargo.
As Zinner notes:
Musk’s attack on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau hinges on his new role as one of President-elect Donald Trump’s go-to guys for shrinking government. In theory, that agenda appeals to an anti-bureaucratic, libertarian strain in American politics — a sentiment that has ebbed considerably since its high point in the Reagan years, given what Americans have learned from the savings-and-loan debacle, the predatory practices of credit card companies, payday lenders, and of course, the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession. Voters like government agencies that work well and work for them.
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