As Christine Chen Zinner, a senior policy counsel at the nonprofit Americans for Financial Reform, pointed out in an interview, the agency has been politically under siege since its creation. “We have a bad feeling about the direction that it’s going,” she said. “This is an agency that was created after a devastating financial crisis because there were regulatory gaps.”
As climate-fueled disasters escalate, insurers are getting richer while leaving Americans in the lurch. Citing climate-related losses, many insurance companies are exorbitantly inflating rates, refusing to renew policies, and delaying, denying, or underpaying claims.
President Donald Trump’s energy secretary and two of his major donors won a key victory last week when the Securities and Exchange Commission moved to back off a rule requiring large companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and any plans to reduce them.
Chants of “let us work!” rang out across the courtyard of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) blocks away from the White House on Monday, as hundreds of angry protesters rallied against the Trump administration’s decision to suspend all operations at the US’s top financial watchdog – an agency that has clawed back more than $21bn from Wall Street for defrauded consumers.
Elon Musk has spent years laying the groundwork to transform X into a digital payments platform. Now he appears to be helping dismantle the agency that would oversee it.
The CFPB’s mission is widely popular among Americans, based on polling across the political spectrum. Many Republican lawmakers have long opposed the agency, however, accusing it of regulatory overreach. Recently, Musk and certain other tech leaders, including Marc Andreessen and Mark Zuckerberg, have become particularly critical of the watchdog, as the agency has turned its eye toward Silicon Valley.
Days before taking the oath of office, Donald Trump and his family launched a new cryptocurrency token — known informally as a meme coin — called $TRUMP, as the crypto industry held an inaugural ball. Despite scant details about the coin’s value, use, or risks, trading took off, sending the coin’s price skyrocketing.
Christine Chen Zinner, a senior lawyer for Americans for Financial Reform, a progressive consumer advocacy group, said: “Those billions that Chopra got back for consumers meant less profit for the industry. If Trump really cared about everyday people, he’d keep Chopra around.”
“Trump ran as a populist,” [said Christine Chen Zinner, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform.] “So the Trump administration really has a decision to make about whether any of the populist rhetoric that came out of their campaign is meaningful or just a cover to let Wall Street take control of CFPB.”
But imposing a blanket national ban would still be a major boon to consumers, Christine Chen Zinner, chief policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform, told Yahoo Finance. If it’s implemented, the rule would make it easier for Americans to dispute unfair or incorrect hospital bills by taking away the threat that their credit score could be harmed if the debt is sent to collections.