Fair Lending is a fundamentally important part of the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and of a financial system that works for families and communities. The Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity needs the authority, the resources, and the connections to key levers of change to do its job.
Charging that the single director structure — which helps make the bureau an effective consumer regulator, if that director is committed to the public interest — was unconstitutional evolved into a mainstay of attacks from Wall Street, predatory lenders, and their friends in Congress and the administration.
On the first anniversary of the Trump administration, the Take on Wall Street coalition catalogs the ways that Wall Street made bank on Trump in 2017.
From tax cuts to deregulation to changes at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the first year of the Trump administration has been a boon to Wall Street at the expense of ordinary Americans.
The report includes facts about lobbying spending that hit $2 billion in the last election cycle, and continues unabated, Wall Street executives in the Trump administration and regulatory agencies, tax cut windfalls for the finance industry, and a deregulatory free-for-all. It also includes a case study of how Wells Fargo’s outrageous conduct somehow earned it the distinction of being the biggest winner from the Trump-Republican tax bill.
“Under current law, banks with more than $50 billion in assets are considered ‘systemically important financial institutions’ and therefore are subject to extra scrutiny. The Senate bill would lift that threshold to $250 billion, relaxing oversight of 25 of the 38 largest banks in the country. According to Americans for Financial Reform, those banks are collectively responsible for $3.5 trillion in assets and received nearly $50 billion in bailout money during the financial crisis.”
““When Mick Mulvaney was a member of Congress, the World Acceptance Corporation gave more campaign contributions to him than any other member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Today, as acting director of the Consumer Bureau, Mulvaney showed his gratitude by dismissing a four-year investigation into deceptive practices the company has used to trap consumers into debt. Mulvaney’s actions leave no doubt where his priorities lie – campaign friends over consumers.”
In the past 10 years, nine big Wall Street firms have fundamentally altered the rental landscape in their targeted cities across 13 states by eliminating the human aspects of the relationship between tenants and their landlord. In some areas, the largest SFR companies own a large percentage of all single family rentals in a given zip code – up to 12.5 percent in some areas.
“This abrupt and reckless decision by Mick Mulvaney shows the level of disdain he has toward working families. He’s giving a free pass to his past campaign contributors, and he is enabling payday lenders to get away with charging obscene triple digit interest rates in violation of state law, to people who are already struggling to make ends meet.”