Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office and Management and Budget, who is also moonlighting as a financial regulator, has literally decided to demote the “Consumer” in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In public communications he now calls it the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, formalizing it in the new cookie-cutter seal. And failing to put consumers first has been a trend for Mulvaney.
The Associated Press reported this week that the CFPB, or BCFP (actually, there's no way I'm calling it that), has not recorded one enforcement action in the 135 days since Mulvaney took over last November. As Sherrod Brown, ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said in Mulvaney's semi-annual report to Congress Thursday, the number of enforcement actions on his watch are actually negative four, because the agency “has withdrawn lawsuits against four payday lenders that charge consumers triple-digit interest rates.”
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