Springtime for Scammers Financial predation now has friends in high places Paul Krugman Feb 11, 2025 But why create a new agency to limit these abuses? Don’t we already have bank regulators? Yes, but these regulators are primarily focused on securing the stability of the financial system. Protecting consumers from fraud is at best an afterthought. Warren’s insight was that protecting consumers required creating a separate agency with its own institutional imperatives. And she was right: By any reasonable standard, CFPB has been an outstanding success story. Why, then, rush to shutter the agency? By the way, this action, like much of what the Trump administration is doing, is almost surely illegal. It probably also won’t surprise you to learn that DOGE appears to have illegally been given access to much of the agency’s data. Well, it’s illuminating to read the section on abolishing CFPB in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership.
My letter to reps:
My credit was ruined for years because of less than $500 worth of medical bills, some which were paid, just staying on my credit report. It ruined my credit for years of my life. CFPB made a rule against this. And now Elon Musk, the tycoon running the government, decided to end that. I can’t even describe the depths of my anger about this and at the elected politicians allowing this to happen. It’s disgusting. How can elected representatives claim to represent the people and do this? It’s an outrage. CFPB has been making rules to stop bad actors ripping us off in the financial system. Who gains by supporting rip-offs of the American people exactly? I’m sure we’ll find out since I heard that Elon Musk fired all the CFPB employees investigating big tech violations. Who’s representing the ordinary folks? Sure sounds like the tycoon that’s running things at central government doge is working for himself.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose the contents of my letter for your own letters to reps.
Trump’s biggest corruption yet Robert Reich Feb 11, 2025 Last weekend, the Trump-Musk regime shuttered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The federal government is no longer protecting consumers of financial products. Trump-Musk ordered all work to stop at the CFPB. Its X account was deleted and its homepage unplugged. CFPB employees who went to the building Sunday to retrieve things they needed to work remotely were turned away by security. Keep connecting the dots. The shutting of the CFPB was welcomed by the crypto crowd, including Musk, and by those issuing Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, such as Trump. Besides his financial interest in crypto, Musk has stated publicly he’s seeking to create an “everything app” that could be used for all financial transactions. Mark Zuckerberg and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen are aiming for the same thing.