Last week, newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent granted billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team access to all of the federal government payments data. Musk’s team of tech bros are currently upending and disrupting the entire federal government without clear statutory authority or congressional approval.
The combination of Big Banks, Big Tech, and Big Data have converged to rampantly collect and commodify people’s most private information and financial data. These companies are surveilling every bank transaction, mouse click, cell phone tap, and online purchase.
Last December, Alex Mashinsky, the founder and former CEO of the crypto lender and trading platform Celsius Network, pled guilty to federal fraud charges and agreed to surrender $48 million in illegal gains from his schemes. Mashinsky admitted he misled customers about the safety of their investment accounts and used their funds to manipulate the price of Celsius’s in-house token.
Last month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) put $1.8 billion back into the pockets of 4 million people fleeced by credit repair companies Lexington Law and CreditRepair.com. This is one more example of the CFPB doing its job to hold corporate scofflaws accountable, stand up for working people, and get financial justice for people who were ripped off or scammed by predatory finance.
We are now full-on into the mad rush of the busiest shopping season of the year and retail sales are expected to reach a record breaking $75 billion just from Black Friday through Cyber Monday. But can we really afford all of these purchases? Or are we being lured into an endless credit card debt trap that will take the rest of the year — or longer — to pay off the interest and fees and charges?
This week, a chapter closed on one of the more outlandish crypto crimes we’ve seen (which is saying a lot for crypto): a couple of internet influencers pulled off a massive crypto heist that fueled their lavish lifestyle, leading to the Department of Justice’s largest asset seizure in history.