Kraninger is wildly unqualified to lead the CFPB: Before her confirmation, she had no experience in consumer protection or financial regulation. Civil rights groups and Wall Street watchdogs [AFR letter linked] uniformly opposed her, while the financial industry supported her—perceiving correctly that she would be, at best, a do-nothing director.
I spoke with Carter Dougherty of the group Americans for Financial Reform … I asked him whether this kind of tinkering would necessarily lead to another financial crisis. “No. And I would not argue that. Can you argue persuasively that [actions by Trump-appointed regulators] will make the next recession more painful than it should be? That is absolutely the case.”
This new data “confirms what advocates in the student borrower advocacy community have been saying for a long time: that student debt has hit crisis levels in the U.S.,” said Alexis Goldstein, senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform.
“Did anyone take Internet Security 101?” says Linda Jun, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform. “I always tell my elderly parents, whatever you do, don’t click on anything! How do you know it’s legit? How do you know it isn’t a scam?”
Vox article quotes Heather Slavkin-Corzo, senior fellow at Americans for Financial Reform and director of capital markets policy for the AFL-CIO: “When a private equity firm steps in, it’s a classic case of ‘Heads I win, tails you lose’ … They have a real short-term focus on extracting as much cash as possible, as quickly as possible.”
In practice, that meant they often sold off real estate holdings, cut workers’ pay and benefits, and did away with jobs to turn a quick profit for investors, according to Heather Slavkin Corzo, a senior fellow at Americans for Financial Reform and the director of capital markets policy for the labor union AFL-CIO. “When a private equity firm steps in, it’s a classic case of ‘heads I win, tails you lose,” Corzo said. “They have a real short-term focus on extracting as much cash as possible, as quickly as possible.”