This puts a vital consumer protection on the chopping block at the behest of predatory payday lenders, inviting them to continue profiting from trapping borrowers in a cycle of debt. We urge the Director to change course and not finalize such a rule.
Advocates from 74 national and state advocacy groups sent a letter yesterday afternoon to new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Kathy Kraninger urging the bureau to focus on protecting consumers from abusive debt collection practices in anticipation of a proposed debt collection rule expected in March 2019.
In Mick Mulvaney’s final hours as acting director, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) proposed two policies that put consumers at gravely increased risk of the very harm the CFPB is supposed to prevent.
The Senate majority has endorsed a CFPB nominee indistinguishable from Mick Mulvaney, who has done his level best to dismantle from within an agency that once won real results for American families hurt by Wall Street and predatory lenders. Kraninger has no track record at all of consumer protection, or of standing up for vulnerable people.
Kathy Kraninger has put no daylight whatsoever between herself and Mick Mulvaney, who has done his level best to dismantle from within an agency that once won real results for American families hurt by Wall Street and predatory lenders. He has subverted, not advanced, the mission of consumer protection for which Congress created the CFPB.
Today’s financial stability report from the Federal Reserve clearly documents that we are at or near the peak of an economic cycle, with inflated asset prices and strong lending growth leading to signs of excessive leverage in the corporate sector. The peak of the cycle is the time to strengthen financial safeguards, not weaken them.
The groups pressed the OCC that any changes to the CRA must strengthen — not weaken — banks’ obligation to meet the needs of low-income communities and communities of color and that changes must result in expanded access to credit in historically redlined areas.
What we heard today from the diverse membership of the SEC’s own advisory committee is that they share our view that the proposed Reg BI would not protect investors. The IAC has called on the SEC to instead pass rules that make clear that brokers have a legal obligation to act in the best interests of their clients.
Wells Fargo must complete a comprehensive review that identifies every single homeowner affected by this problem, and must adequately compensate them for the serious harm they have suffered as a result of losing their homes to wrongful foreclosure or paying for a more expensive modification.
We strongly disapprove of the new proposal to change rules for derivatives trading announced in today’s meeting of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The requirement that complex derivatives be traded whenever possible in open, competitive markets was a crucial element of Dodd-Frank derivatives market reforms.