Musk Calls to Eliminate Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Fed Watchdog Agency; More

- 'Elon Musk calls to ‘delete’ US finance consumer watchdog agency,' The Guardian, Nov. 28, 2024. Edit. Tech billionaire tapped by Trump posts on X about wanting to eliminate Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
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Elon Musk has said he wants to “delete” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a federal watchdog that helps protect consumers from predatory financial practices. The tech billionaire, who has been tapped to run a “Department of Government Efficiency” in the incoming Donald Trump administration, posted “Delete CFPB” on X, the social media site he owns. He added a declaration that the agency, which employs 1,700 people and has an annual budget of close to $700m, is an example of “too many duplicative regulatory agencies” in Washington.

The CFPB is an independent watchdog agency with oversight over banks and other financial institutions, created after the financial crash of 2008 and charged with overseeing consumer protection in the industry.

Musk’s post came in response to a recent podcast clip from the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, a significant Trump donor, who said the agency’s primary purpose is to “terrorize financial institutions”. But it was soon reported that Andreessen’s venture capital firm, Andreessen Horwitz, was among other investors who had backed LendUp, an online consumer payday lender, that was shut down by the CFPB in 2018. The CFPB director, Rohit Chopra, said the company’s lending operations were shuttered “for repeatedly lying and illegally cheating its customers”.

Trump announced a plan for Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to run a new advisory agency, known by the acronym Doge, earlier this month. Musk has said he would like the newly formed commission to cut $2tn from federal government running costs – approximately a third of all government spending. Trump has said Doge and its new “efficiency” tsars would “provide advice and guidance from outside of Government” to “restructure Federal Agencies”. Ramaswamy and Musk – whose X bio is now headlined: “the people voted for major government reform” – outlined plans for a “drastic reduction” in regulations and “mass head-count reductions” last week in the Wall Street Journal.

.. But dismantling the CFPB would be a signal of broader plans for disruption. The agency was formed after the financial crash of 2008, which was caused by insecure or predatory lending to “subprime” mortgage borrowers. Safeguards to prevent a repeat of the disaster included regulatory financial reforms and the formation of CFPB. The agency It has also drawn the attention of the conservative policy blueprint known as Project 2025, which called for CFPB to be abolished...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/28/elon-musk-cfpb-trump
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Wiki. - The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is an independent agency of the U.S. government responsible for consumer protection in the financial sector. CFPB's jurisdiction includes banks, credit unions, securities firms, payday lenders, mortgage-servicing operations, foreclosure relief services, debt collectors, for-profit colleges, and other financial companies operating in the U.S.

Since its founding, the CFPB has used technology tools to monitor how financial entities used social media and algorithms to target consumers. The agency was originally proposed in 2007 by Elizabeth Warren while she was a law professor. The CFPB's creation was authorized by the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, whose passage in 2010 was a legislative response to the financial crisis of 2007–08 and the subsequent Great Recession and is an independent bureau within the Federal Reserve.

Throughout its existence, the Bureau has been persistently targeted by Republican politicians and the financial industry; it is one of the agencies that Project 2025 advocates that Congress should cut...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Financial_Protection_Bureau