Scott Bessent, the new Treasury Secretary, has been named acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Bessent replaces Rohit Chopra, who was fired this past week.
In an internal email shared with NPR, staff members were instructed to immediately cease much of the bureau’s work “unless expressly approved by the Acting Director or required by law.”
“I look forward to working with the CFPB to advance President Trump’s agenda to lower costs for the American people and accelerate economic growth,” Bessent said.
The CFPB is constantly suing. Currently, it’s after Walmart, Zelle, Capital One, and its financial institutions. The money from these nonstop fines goes into a Civil Penalty Fund, which can be used for allegedly harmed victims.
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Scott Bessent has shut down the CFPB’s anti-capitalist agenda. He froze all rulemaking, litigation, enforcement actions, and public communications. CFPB can’t operate.
Hopefully, it will have a new mission as a watchdog with a limited mandate and oversight or disappear altogether.
Opinion
The CFPB, an Elizabeth Warren creation, has been a socialist battering ram against capitalist entities with its unchecked power and unlimited budget. It’s a rogue agency, with Rohit Chopra acting without submitting to congressional review.
Instead of the market controlling financial institutions, bureaucratic fiat did.
Chopra’s policies are gone for now, including the ban on medical debt in credit reports and the cap on overdraft fees. They ended up restricting financial services instead of helping those they purported to help.
Bessent’s actions will help reduce the bloated government.
As of September 2023, the Civil Penalty Fund had collected $3.4 billion and held a balance of $1.9 billion. They maintain a balance and allegedly educate consumers with some of that money. Junk fees, student loans, so-called mortgage relief scams, predatory lending, and illegal debt collection allegedly harmed the victims who collected. Many think the reasons for the fines are scams.
The CFPB isn’t much of a consumer protection agency. It’s more about allowing the bureaucracy to control the markets. Democrats believe in the free market as long as it is so heavily regulated that it is no longer free.
The CFPB is a bastion of regulation and is out of control.
Warren’s Very Disturbed
Elizabeth Warren is very disturbed by the turn of events and claims that this is taking money out of the hands of working people. In the end, the reality is that small lenders end up with a bureaucratic mess, and credit becomes harder to come by. It’s ineffective to have unchecked regulatory agencies.
CFPB is the heart of the beast of over-regulation from the Obama era. It is a typical government agency – it’s political and wasteful. It punishes businesses on behalf of their ideology and preferred voting bloc.
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