NEWS: 100% of CFPB donations went to Democrats

ALTERNATIVE FINANCIAL SERVICE PROVIDERS ASSOCIATION

NEWS: November 28, 2016

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What will happen to the CFPB under Trump?

Since the day it was created, Republicans have talked about dismantling or defanging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). With the surprise election of Donald Trump as the next president, and continued Republican control of Congress, the GOP will certainly have that chance. It won't be easy, however.

The brainchild of then-Harvard bankruptcy professor Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB was created in the wake of the financial meltdown caused, in part, by consumer confusion and missteps when using products like complex mortgages. Among its first tasks was creating simplified documents for home sale closings. It has also taken on a host of other controversial financial products, like payday loans and private student loans.

Consumers have generally been receptive to the agency, which celebrated its fifth anniversary this summer. At the time, it said it had helped 27 million consumers get $11.7 billion in relief from financial businesses. More than 700,000 consumers had filed a complaint with the bureau. And that was before a $185 million settlement with Wells Fargo for deceptive cross-selling.

On the other hand, Republicans in Congress have tried - via token legislative efforts destined for presidential vetoes - to kill the bureau. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced the Repeal CFPB Act just last year, for example. They claim it has too much power and is hurting financial institutions with burdensome regulations.

Authors of the law that created the CFPB worked hard to design an agency that could be above the whims of party swings in Washington D.C. It is run by a single executive, instead of the typical five-member executive committee, like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The CFPB executive serves five-year terms that are out of synch with presidential elections, and the law stipulated that the chair could only be removed 'for cause.' Its funding source is not Congress, but the Federal Reserve, to prevent meddling pressure from the Capitol when Congress members might dislike individual bureau decisions.

That independence, which CFPB creator Warren has said was critical for the bureau to perform its watchdog function, has been the source of Republicans' distaste. Read more at USA TODAY

Regulations? Who needs regulations?

LOS ANGELES - After years of fines, settlements and tightening regulations, the biggest story in banking this year was more bad news for the industry: the unauthorized accounts scandal at Wells Fargo & Co. and the expected further crackdown to follow.

But the story changed this week when Donald Trump - a pro-business candidate who has vowed to scrap regulations spurred by the financial crisis - unexpectedly won his bid for the White House.

When markets opened Wednesday, investors piled into financial stocks, expecting that Trump will make good on his pledge to dismantle much of 2010's landmark Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act - or at least have a lighter regulatory hand.

That could include pushing for an outright repeal of Dodd-Frank and the rules it spawned, supporting a weaker replacement version or dramatically reshaping the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency created by Dodd-Frank that's been a top target of Republican lawmakers.

Trump's stunning victory is seen as a boon for financial firms and by consumer advocates as a threat to the new regulations, despite his lack of any specific proposals.

"There's no question from the industry's standpoint that a Trump victory is a huge win," said Scott Pearson, a Los Angeles-based partner at law firm Ballard Spahr, which specializes in representing financial firms and often works with clients facing CFPB scrutiny. "But I think there is still some uncertainty. We'll see what he follows through on."

It's not clear how Trump might change specific rules for big banks, small banks and other financial firms.

Still, the KBW-Nasdaq bank index, which tracks a basket of bank stocks, climbed 4.9 percent on Wednesday to its highest level in more than a year.

Read the entire article at NORWALK REFLECTOR

Consumer Protection Bureau Chief Braces for a Reckoning

WASHINGTON - Mild-mannered, lawyerly and with a genius for trivia, Richard Cordray is not the sort of guy you picture at the center of Washington's bitter partisan wars over regulation and consumer safeguards.

But there he is, a 57-year-old Buckeye who friends say prefers his hometown diner to a fancy political reception, testifying in hearing after hearing on Capitol Hill about the agency he leads, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Republicans would like to do away with it - and with him, arguing that the agency should be led by a commission rather than one person.

And with a Republican sweep of Congress and the White House, they may get some or all of what they wish.

Mr. Cordray, a reluctant Washingtonian who has commuted here for six years from Grove City, Ohio, where his wife and twin children live, is the first director of the consumer watchdog agency, which was created in 2010 after Wall Street's meltdown. By aggressively deploying his small army of workers - he has 1,600 of them - Mr. Cordray has turned the fledgling agency into one of Washington's most powerful and pugnacious regulators.

The bureau has overhauled mortgage lending rules, reined in abusive debt collectors, prosecuted hundreds of companies and extracted nearly $12 billion from businesses in the form of canceled debts and consumer refunds. In September, it exposed the extent of Wells Fargo's creation of two million fraudulent customer accounts, igniting a scandal that provoked widespread outrage and toppled the company's chief executive.

And, according to Mr. Cordray, he and his team have barely scratched the surface of combating consumer abuse. Read the article at NEW YORK TIMES

100 percent of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau donations went to Democrats

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the most partisan agency in the federal government in terms of donations to candidates, according to campaign finance data.

Employees at the CFPB, which was created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, contributed nearly $50,000 during the 2016 campaign with all of that money going to aid Hillary Clinton or her rival, the insurgent socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Agency employees made more than 300 donations during the campaign. Not one went to a Republican candidate.

Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wisc., a frequent critic of the agency, said that it is no surprise that the agency would contribute to the Democratic campaign. Republicans have tried to reduce the scope of the bureau's broad regulatory power since Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., one of the most liberal lawmakers in the country, oversaw its creation.

"CFPB employees fell over each other to give money to Hillary because she supported CFPB's desire to remain in the shadows and unaccountable to the American people," Duffy said. "No one is shocked that Washington bureaucrats would donate to the candidate who promised to maintain and expand onerous Dodd-Frank regulations that crush our community banks and local credit unions."

The bureau did not return request for comment from the Washington Free Beacon about the donations.

The CFPB was one of just four agencies in which every political contribution went to the Democratic Party or allied groups, though one of those agencies' donations came from just one employee.

Peace Corps workers contributed nearly $25,000 to Hillary Clinton and her allies, including the pro-abortion Emily's List PAC, the second highest total of monolithic agency contributions.