The Oligarchy Strikes Back
Team Elon takes down consumer watchdog
Just two days after firing the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Trump Administration has ordered the proven consumer champion to stop all work.
NPR reports:
In an internal email shared with NPR, staff were instructed to immediately cease much of the bureau's work, including issuing or approving proposed or final rules or guidance, and suspending the effective dates of all final rules that have been issued but have not yet become effective.
Staff were also instructed not to commence or settle enforcement actions, nor to issue any public communications of any type, including research papers.
As the NPR story notes, CFPB is currently engaged in enforcement actions against a number of financial bad actors, including Capital One and the Big Banks that own Zelle.
Capital One is accused of cheating savings account customers out of $2 billion. Zelle, owned by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, “reimbursed just 38% of fraud claims” on the platform.
The scope of these two cases alone nears $3 billion.
Thanks to Elon and the Oligarchs and their willing servant, Trump, American consumers stand to lose billions in the financial marketplace. Meanwhile, the big banks and the payday predators will extract cash from those least able to mount resistance.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, who led the effort under President Obama to create the CFPB, said:
“Secretary Bessent just sent a signal to giant corporations and big banks that it is open season to cheat, trick, and trap hard-working American families. Shutting down CFPB enforcement actions that are on the verge of delivering money into the pockets of working people is at odds with President Trump’s claim that he wants to lower costs for families – which he has done next to nothing on so far. This also follows Secretary Bessent giving Elon Musk and his cronies unprecedented access to government payment systems that deliver everything from Social Security checks to tax refunds. Secretary Bessent must reverse course, and if he doesn’t, I will use every tool at my disposal in the Banking Committee to hold him accountable – along with any company that lines its pockets at the expense of American taxpayers.”
A statement from the corporate accountability advocates at Demand Progress paints a stark picture:
“The president who took the oath of office while flanked by grinning, billionaire CEOs fired Rohit Chopra. You couldn’t script a more thuddingly obvious sign that we are now in a new era of oligarchy.
Chopra and his team at the CFPB have worked tirelessly to rein in corporate abuse and make government work for the people, not the powerful. His departure is a meaningful signal that we should expect ample handouts to billionaires and rampant, corporate law-breaking under a second Trump administration.”
The CFPB was the only federal agency with the guts to defend American consumers from the greed of the big banks--the CFPB returned over $21M since its creation in 2011. That pissed the banks off because their grifts were no longer protected by courts or legal tricks like hiding the money in a fake entity they owned (Zelle). The pliant Hill denizens they gave campaign $$ to looked like their heads would explode when Rohit Chopra and his CFPB mates would act!