Why Americans (But Not Banks) Love The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Yes, even Republicans too.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks at Monday’s demonstration outside CFPB. Video screenshot, Associated Press on YouTube

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created by Congress following the 2008 financial crash, to help Americans who aren’t part of the reigning Finance ‘n’ Tech Oligarchy stand up to the giant corporations that seek to extract profits from us at every opportunity. Remember, the 2008 collapse resulted directly from Wall Street investment banks’ gambling with exotic investment schemes that were mostly based in trading debt on home mortgages. (Counterpoint: Everything would have been fine if housing prices had simply kept going up forever.)

As part of the fallout, we got a little bit of banking regulation and we also got the CFPB, which might not have been able to prevent the crash if it had been around in 2006, but was designed to help Americans get some relief from exploitative schemes like payday loans, ripoff car dealers, and hinky banking practices.

Oh, and by complete coincidence, the CFPB also would have been in charge of regulating President Elon Musk’s exciting new online venture, which will turn his Twitter social media app into a way of making payments, in partnership with Visa. That’s supposed to get rolling later this year, so it sure will be a lot easier if it’s not regulated by a consumer watchdog. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when on Friday Musk and his Teenage Doggy Ninja Turds showed up at CFPB and started musking around in the agency’s computers, and the federal workers union representing CFPB workers issued a deliciously snarky GTFO message to them.

After that, Musk shut down CFPB’s Twitter account and sent his own triumphant message, “RIP CFPB,” complete with a tombstone emoji, and that’s what counts for official federal business these days.

Conflict of interest? We don’t talk about those anymore. It’s a new era, and besides, a slim plurality of Americans voted for Musk to do whatever he wants, now didn’t they? Also on Friday, Trump appointed budget director and Project 2025 dude Russell Vought to be the acting director of CFPB. Vought immediately ordered a freeze on everything the agency does.

Monday, CFPB workers, members of the public organized by Indivisible and other pro-democracy groups, and members of Congress like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Maxine Waters demonstrated outside the closed-down CFPB headquarters in Washington. Warren said of the takeover by Musk and crew, “This is like a bank robber trying to fire the cops and turn off the alarm just before he strolls into the lobby. We are here to fight back — we want our financial cops back on the beat.”

Oh look, here’s video, cued to the beginning of Warren’s remarks!

The federal employee union that represents CFPB workers filed a pair of lawsuits against Vought Tuesday, one aimed at keeping the Muskboys out of the agency’s computer systems and files, and the second seeking to block Vought’s order to stop all work at the CFPB, including investigations. Like other lawsuits against the Dogboys, the suit argues that Congress created CFPB, and only Congress, not the executive branch, can shut it down or defund it.

While all that works its way through the courts and we find out just how deep a constitutional crisis we’re in, let’s just review a few of the things the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has done for America, shall we? The top-line number is almost $20 billion (the New York Times says $21b): That’s the total so far of how much money the agency has helped 195 million Americans recover from banks, payday lenders, credit card companies, and other financial ne’er-do-wells who ripped us off.

Probably the biggest win was against Wells Fargo Bank, which paid a record $3.7 billion settlement in 2022 after the CFPB sued it over a ton of grifty practices involving auto loans, unjustified overdraft fees, and denying home mortgage modifications that would have benefited borrowers. Of that settlement, $2 billion was paid back to some 16 million consumers, and the other $1.7 billion was a civil penalty to remind Wells Fargo not to steal customers’ money — a bit more than a slap on the wrist! Then-CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said at the time that Wells Fargo is “one of the most problematic repeat offenders” in CFPB history, while the bank’s CEO, still holding a fake rubber ghost mask, snarled that he’d have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling regulators.

In a separate case in 2016, CFPB won another $185 million judgment against Wells Fargo for opening credit card and other accounts without customers’ permission, as well as billing customers for other services they never signed up for. The bank even created fake email accounts to sign the customers up. That was about 1.5 million unasked-for bank accounts, and another 500,000 unauthorized credit card “applications.”

The CFPB also went after other banks that added unwanted services (and fees) to customers’ accounts or charged late fees when payments were actually on time, won a settlement for military service members ripped off on car title loans, and shut Navient out of the student-loan servicing business for griftynasty predatory practices and shitty customer service, among other wins.

But those big cases and settlements are just part of why Americans — in both parties! — constantly say in polling that they like CFPB and want it to keep doing what it does. To be sure, most people answering a poll may not follow politics in detail or know that elected Republicans have hated the CFPB since before it was actually up and running. But Americans hate ripoffs and like consumer protection, they are acutely aware that they’re constantly targeted for wealth extraction by big businesses, and they like the idea of having a government agency that’s riding herd on companies that are constantly throwing higher fees and hidden charges at them.

And a lot of them know that if they don’t get the services that they’re promised, they can submit a complaint to the CFPB through a handy web link and they’ll get right on it, sometimes absurdly fast, because the grifting is so common and the banks and other malefactors damn well know it. Why, we happen to know an editor of a popular mommyblog and recipe hub who got the $750 that Chase owed her within just a week! Incidentally, that complaint page is still up; while the CFPB homepage gives you a 404 Not Found message, all the links at the top of the page work. But nobody’s doing anything with the requests until the lawsuit makes the Felon and (F)Elon back off.

We’ll keep you up to date on where this goes. Americans like being protected from the shit big corporations pull, and Democrats are fighting like crazy to oppose this, and MuskTrump are clearly acting well outside of the law, so … we have at least a slim chance that the courts will put a stop to this bullshit.

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This Press Release From the CFPB Union Is Just ... *Chef's Kiss*

Wells Fargo Apologizing For All The Fraud By Killing Customer Lawsuits

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[CNN / Guardian / Yahoo Finance / DNC / Politico / NYT / Photo: Sheila Blige, Creative Commons License 2.0]

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