More than a decade and a half ago, Elizabeth Warren watched crowds in Washington to her feet with a resonance accusation in Wall Street and the toxic securities of the mortgage that prompted the American banking system to the brink of collapse in the great financial crisis in 2008. Warren was then a fifty -year -old professor in Harvard University Law Faculty was not well known. Harry Reed, the leader of the Democratic majority of the Senate, recently appointed her to the Congress Committee charged with examining the seven hundred dollars of the bank’s rescue plan signed by George W. Bush in October 2008. In addition to Lambasting, bankers were because of their recklessness and greed, he was calling Warren to create A new agency to defend the interests of mortgage holders, savings, and credit card holders, and anyone else obligated to deal with banks and other financial companies. In 2010, a Democratic Conference issued a Dodd-Rank Reform Act, which established the Consumer Protection Office (CFPB). Warren worked as a consultant to Barack Obama and helped lift the new agency.
A week ago, Illon Musk, Tweet, “CFPB Rip“In a short time, the Trump administration closed the agency’s headquarters, stopped most of its operations, and has registered some of its employees. Since Demarks Musk, Warren – who was elected to the Senate Democrats from Massachusetts in 2013, was now in her third term – led efforts to save CFPB And speak on a march outside its offices, and tear it to the CEO of Tesla on TV interviews, and in a hearing in the Senate, pressure Jerome PowellThe Federal Reserve Chairman, to confirm that without CFPB there is no government agency to ensure that financial companies obey consumer protection laws.
When I fell with Warren on the phone, late last week, I remembered that before the creation of CFPB, the responsibility for enforcing these laws was divided between six organizational agencies. “Not anyone was, and nothing was done,” I noticed. The founding of CFPB has brought consumer protection – organization, supervision and enforcement – under one roof. “For ten years, CFPB was the financial policeman in the rhythm,” Warren went. “I found more than twenty -one billion dollars of fraud and fraud, and I withdrew this money and returned it directly to the people who were cheated. Now Elon Musk comes and says:” Let’s launch the policemen. “What can happen wrong?”
Since its inception, CFPB has dealt with a wide range of violations by financial companies. Last year, it requested a decrease in the late credit card fees, which reduced the typical payment by more than half, and the exposed drawing fees from the bank with a capacity of $ five. In January, a week before Trump’s opening, CFPB filed a lawsuit against capital, which is the largest bank in the country, accused of deceiving its customers from more than a billion dollars in interest payments on their savings accounts by failing to inform them of that were the highest average options. Available. (The first capital opposed the agency’s claims and said he would strongly defend himself in court.)
CFPB has also sought to organize the payment day, collect debt, and credit classifications. Last month, it announced that the relief fund for its victims, which was funded from the fines imposed on companies that have crashed the law, will pay between 1.8 billion to 4.3 million hard US dollars. Illegal, and failed to provide promises to repair distorted credit assessments. In another investigation, the agency’s employees discovered that the debt collectors working in hospitals and other medical service providers were coercive to pay payments by threatening to report their medical debts of classification agencies. At the beginning of January, CFPB terminated a base that would prevent classification agencies from narrating the medical debt on credit reports.
Like many CFPB actions, this new rule has been stabbed in the courts. Julie Margta Morgan, the former participating director of the agency, told me: “The debt collection agencies were making a lot of money from this practice, so they had a strong incentive to fight.” Currently, it seems that the Trump administration can completely dismantle CFPB, reflect many of its rules, and settle its suspended conditions on favorable conditions for the defendants. If this happens, “it is an open season for everyone who has a credit card, a real estate loan, a car loan, a on -day loan, a student loan, or a financial application online is used.”
Upon appearing alongside Donald Trump in the Oval Office last week, Musk claimed that reducing spending and reducing its size from the federal government is necessary to prevent the United States from bankruptcy. But even if the financial reduction is the ultimate goal of government efficiency management (Dodge), The reason for the Musk classified CFPB in 2024, the agency’s budget was crowned with $ 785.4 million, while federal spending reached $ 6.75 trillion. The long division shows that the percentage of SFPB spending was about 0.01 percent. If the entire agency budget is canceled for an entire century, this will save about one percent of the budget for one year.
Warren and others pointed out that Musk may have a personal interest in distorting CFPB since the seizure of Twitter and changing his name to X, Musk talked about converting the statute to “applying everything” that provides services such as online banking and E-trading services. Last month, X announced a partnership with Visa to create an X Money account, which will enable its users to buy things online and make a counterpart payment. In theory, such action can attract CFPB, which expands its power on large online payment systems. In December, the office filed a lawsuit against three of the country’s largest banks, and the Bank of America, and Wells Fargo- “to allow fraud in Zelle”, a payment system they participated in possessing four other banks. (Zeel disagreement in the lawsuit as “legally defective and realistic”.
In some of her public appearances last week, Warren marched the Musk attack on CFPB, stealing a bank that cares for the warnings as he was stealing in the hallway. I asked her why many elected Republicans who do not launch a new financial application also yearn for the CFPB description provided by two interpretations. First, the large banks had repeated the agency because even before they started work, they practiced a lot of influence in the Republican Party, “The banks see themselves a more profitable future if they were able to get rid of CFPB”, I noticed.
Another interpretation related to ideology: Warren said this is the heart of the matter. “The Republicans have preached the Gospel for years that the government is always wrong; it is always stupid. She reminded me:“ Do not make things right. ”CFPB lives, breathing guide, every day, we can make government for ordinary people. We can use the government to settle the play field, so that students are not cheated in their educational loans, or the family can take a mortgage to buy a house without the need to deceive on the thirty -sixth page and this means that they will lose the house two years ago. This is the government operating the way, and it is truly under the skins of the most extremist Republican. “
I wondered loudly if it was attacking an agency defending the interests of ordinary Americans that could eventually lead to counter -results on Trump and the Republicans. Warren said that it could be, and for the first time in our conversation, she expressed some hope in the future: “This small agency has helped millions of people. Allowing an uncomfortable billionaire, who discovered another way to remove the audience, is not considered a common step.” The immediate task is represented by In ensuring that CFPB remains, even if it is in a diminishing form, awaiting a less destructive presidency. This is almost what happened during the first Trump administration. With the presence of Musk and the face in the status of the debris, the repetition is far from the guarantee, but there is one certain thing: Warren will not retreat in her efforts to save the agency that helped in its establishment. ♦
