December 17, 2017

Trump's chief of CFPB spent last six years trying to stop regulations of payday lenders

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/12/8/1722599/-Trump-s-chief-of-CFPB-spent-last-six-years-trying-to-stop-regulations-of-payday-lenders
"As Donald Trump and his crew of wannabe-oligarchs take over and file off the teeth of every government protection agency in the country, it’s good to know how transparently swamp-filled the White House has actually become. When rumors began that OMB head Mick Mulvaney was being tapped to take over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau it would have been laughable if it wasn’t really happening. International Business Times put in a FOIA requestion to the CFPB and received hundreds of pages of correspondence between them and Mick Mulvaney. Guess what Mr. Mulvaney was asking them about? During his congressional campaigns, Mulvaney vacuumed in more than $567,000 from donors in the commercial banking, credit and securities/investment industries, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. That includes more than $55,000 from donors in the payday and title loan industry, according to datafrom the National Institute on Money in State Politics. The letters reviewed by IBT show that much of Mulvaney’s criticism of the CFPB revolved around the agency’s attempts to regulate the payday lending industry, which provides short term, high-interest loans. The unregulated scam of payday loans was beginning to see a possible comeuppance over the past year and a half as more and more consumers were banding together and demanding satisfaction. The payday loan industry got their man in Mulvaney, and Mulvaney got his position at the top of the agency that could regulate their predatory practices. There’s a treasure trove that IBT put together, of Mulvaney’s letters to the CFPB, along with other Republican colleagues, attacking things like mortgage regulations∏but mostly the payday loan protections."