Your wallet may suffer if this agency is gutted

[nhboy]

" If you’ve ever had to dispute a charge on a credit card, fix a mix-up with your mortgage or stop a debt collector from hounding you, you’ve benefited from the work of a federal watchdog agency that is now under fire in Washington.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau arguably has done as much to change the financial lives of consumers as any other government agency in history.

Most Americans who have a credit card, bank account, mortgage, student or personal loan, or who care about their credit rating, have been helped by the CFPB. Some 29 million of them, or about 1 of every 8 adults, are receiving direct financial relief — money returned to them — as a result of the bureau’s work since it opened six years ago.

A review of the agency’s record by NerdWallet found that for every $1 in federal spending on the bureau, more than $4 has been placed back in consumers’ pockets. The agency says it has saved or returned to Americans nearly $12 billion since 2011, while costing taxpayers $2.9 billion to operate. "

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2017/03/17/your-wallet-suffer-if-agency-gutted/99170168/?hootPostID=611899011912e93ca164a0e0ebb1701c

 

[Gilligan]

Good for them. Their work is done. Close it up now.

 

[black dog]

All those people,,,, really?
I have never met anyone that used them to cure a problem.

 

[SamSpade]

No one in Washington EVER thinks an agency needs to shut down. That's the problem. Its existence is always justified by the feelings people have about its intended mission.
As long as it looks noble, it can survive forever.

We could create a Save the Puppies agency, and it will exist forever, because who would end an agency and allow puppies to needlessly die?

 

[GURPS]

you mean the Consumer Protection Board for robbing financial institutions - the excluded anyone who remotely might be a GOP'r - and never put ANYTHING on paper, so there would be be records or trail of paperwork



http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443227/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-tragic-failures

Political discrimination was not necessarily illegal, but attempts to hide it invited prohibited race, gender, religion, and age discrimination. In retrospect, the Office of Enforcement’s hiring process, which was typical for the bureau, violated more laws than a bar-exam hypothetical. As screening techniques improved, Republicans were more easily identified and rejected.

Job seekers interviewed with two pairs of attorneys and most senior managers. All Office of Enforcement employees were invited to attend the weekly hiring meetings, where interviewers summarized the applicants. Any attendee could voice an opinion before each candidate’s verdict was rendered; even a single strong objection was usually fatal. Note taking was strictly forbidden, and interviewers destroyed their records after the meetings. I never missed one.

[clip]

The “us against the world” culture that was exhilarating in a startup became debilitating in a mature agency. Internal policies to minimize record-keeping deprived the CFPB’s enemies of statistics, but limited management tools. External criticism was dismissed as disingenuous, good advice ignored. Problems that could not be acknowledged could not be fixed. Morale and productivity deteriorated. The employees unionized.

[clip]

A month later, I understood. My first CFPB-target client was a small-business owner whose twelve-year commercial relationship with a local bank was governed by the same law PHH would later be accused of violating. In 2011, the bank’s regulator had withdrawn its blessing from the arrangement, charged the bank a small fine, and transferred jurisdiction to the bureau. The file collected dust for over a year before Enforcement asked the man to sign a tolling agreement that only a lawyer would recognize as permanent. Fortunately, he contacted me first.

The man felt he’d done nothing wrong, but uncertainty about the investigation would force him to lay off employees. I called the enforcement attorney and offered to come right over and discuss a settlement. When I declined the tolling agreement, he said I had a conflict of interest, hung up, and spent the next month trying to find one. He gave up after I reminded his supervisors that interfering with my client’s constitutional right to counsel was a serious ethics violation.

For the first two hours of the subsequent settlement conference, the attorney refused to discuss a settlement, and continued to press for the tolling agreement. I insisted he make an offer. Finally, he did — ten times more than the bank had paid. I accepted and asked for the settlement documents. Instead, the next day he sent a civil complaint and threatened to sue within 24 hours if my client didn’t sign a tolling agreement.

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