From today’s Philadelphia Inquirer:
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog created after the 2008 financial meltdown and largely muzzled in the Trump era, is poised to start barking again.
The agency will focus first on enforcing legal protections for distressed renters, student borrowers, and others facing growing debt that its previous leadership has been lax about during the pandemic.
But the CFPB — which President Joe Biden has tapped 38-year-old Rohit Chopra, a Wharton School grad, to lead — is also likely to take an unprecedentedly tough line against industry giants it finds engaging in abusive practices, former agency officials advising the Biden team say.
“It’s a matter of ramping back up,” said Richard Cordray, the CFPB’s first director, who stepped down in late 2017. The agency under Trump was “picking at odds and ends. They ramped down, and it’s a matter of changing direction.”
That will mark a dramatic turn. Just last year, consumer complaints to the agency rose by 60% over 2019, agency data show, setting a new record as the economic crisis wiped out millions of jobs and pushed lower-income Americans to the brink.
Yet the relief the agency secured for consumers topped out at less than $700 million, a fraction of the $5.6 billion it collected in 2015, its high watermark. Kathy Kraninger, a Trump appointee who resigned as director of the agency last week at Biden’s request, signaled the outcome at the start of the pandemic. She said in late March that financial companies would not face penalties for violating consumer protections in the Cares Act if they made “good-faith” efforts to comply.
The approach continued the agency’s more hands-off approach to corporate interests under Trump appointees. Over the course of the Trump presidency, the agency wrangled $2.3 billion in consumer relief, a steep drop from the $10.7 billion during its first five full years in operation under the Obama administration. And the agency shifted its crosshairs notably — from big-money actions against major companies including American Express, Citibank, Corinthian Colleges, JPMorgan Chase, Sprint, and Wells Fargo, to smaller-dollar rulings against more fringe firms.
“When you’re only going after last-dollar scammers and small, fly-by-night companies, you’re not sending a message to the big banks, big debt collectors, and big credit bureaus that there’s a sheriff in town,” said Ed Mierzwinski, senior director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s federal consumer program. “As soon as he’s confirmed, Rohit will bring a renewed sense of urgency.”
Read the complete article here.