Kathleen Kraninger, who has helmed CFPB for a scant four months, is unfortunately already making a name for herself as someone willing to let the bad guys off the hook. She is a protégé of Mick Mulvaney, who spent much of 2018 doing his best to lay waste to the CFPB’s work and structure as its acting director.
Trump-appointed regulators came into office saying they would pare back Wall Street’s postcrisis rulebook. More than two years into the administration’s tenure, most of the work remains unfinished, particularly for the biggest banks.
Teaching students how to manage their money has become mandatory in many K-12 classrooms. But can it substitute for real enforcement of financial fraud?
As part of a larger package, the Securities and Exchange Commission this week adopted the new “Regulation Best Interest,” which requires that stock broker/dealers act in their customers’ “best interest,” a term that is not defined.
“By calling this Regulation Best Interest, (Chairman) Jay Clayton and the SEC have gone full Orwell on us,” Dougherty said. “This regulation does not require your broker to act in your best interest the way a doctor or lawyer does. You still need to treat your broker as a used-car salesman who might pull a fast one on you.”
“The failure of Mulvaney’s CFPB to properly carry out the law, whether by failing to supervise companies or dropping cases that were underway is a green light for direct and immediate harm to ordinary Americans,” Carter Dougherty, communications director for Americans for Financial Reform, told TPM via email.
“Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-Va., the chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, introduced a bill last week that sells out students to corporate interests ready to get rich off taxpayer-backed education dollars. A bill reauthorizing the Higher Education Act should be a real opportunity to help students; this one just makes their lives worse by raising repayment costs for struggling borrowers, letting institutions that scam students off the hook, and narrowing relief for defrauded students.”
“Sen. Elizabeth Warren and a group of investor protection groups such as Americans for Financial Reform and the Consumer Federation of America have unveiled the ‘Retirement Ripoff Counter, which is a digital, large-scale, live projector that will show the harm President Trump is doing to investors by delaying the fiduciary rule. On the evening of April 5th, after dusk, the projection of the Retirement Ripoff Counter will be displayed on the sides of several major Washington landmarks.'”
“’People know that financial companies were running amok, and that kind of behavior takes money out of people’s pockets and was the cause of a financial crisis,’ said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform. ‘President Trump campaigned on standing up to Wall Street, and I don’t think his voters are looking for putting Goldman Sachs even more in charge.’”
In the new political environment, it is likely that there will be a heavy emphasis on the capital formation mission of the SEC. The IAC should play a critical role in reminding the Commission that investor protection is crucial to stable and effective capital formation. …Improving financial entity disclosures is crucial if we are to improve market discipline for large financial entities and investor discipline for funds.