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.
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.
“Weakening the CFPB, slowing its work, or steering it to favor industry over the public interest,” explains the advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform, “would give bad actors a green light to do their worst and further deepen this country’s racial wealth gap.”
The billionaire Elon Musk and the California venture capitalist Marc Andreessen have started a debate about the role of government that we should be having — but it might not go the way they would hope. They don’t like government agencies that stop corporations like theirs from ripping off consumers.
“I think you could sort of look at this . . . as a signpost for the future,” said Mark Hays, associate director for cryptocurrency and financial technology at the consumer advocate group Americans for Financial Reform. “If things go wrong, a report like this is one of those things that you look back on to say, ‘What were the early warning signs?’”