By Charlene Crowell –
$4.2 million restitution still owed consumers after nearly a year.
For more than a decade, consumers have lauded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for its myriad accomplishments that have brought transparency and fairness to the financial marketplace. Earlier this year, a survey commissioned by the Center for Responsible Lending found that 82% of Americans believe it is important to regulate financial services to ensure they are fair for consumers.
Research, regulation, investigations, and litigation were among the effective tools CFPB used to return more than $21 billion to over 200 million defrauded consumers.
At the same time, the anti-regulatory interests that opposed CFPB’s creation never stopped trying to weaken, defy, or eliminate the agency. Now with a president and Congress actively embracing a deregulatory stance, the combination of pro-business presidential executive orders vigorously pursued by executive appointees have wreaked financial harm on consumers and compromised the agency’s mission.
From slashing CFPB staffing by 70%, halting both investigations and pending litigation, to reversing regulations on overdraft and credit cards, in recent days a third anti-consumer move announced the agency would not enforce regulation of “buy now, pay later” credit. In sum, today’s agency actions no longer reflect its name or mission.
Yet the fight to neuter CFPB is still not done. It is now moving monies—denying or delaying millions that consumers are rightfully owed, and sending billions of dollars earmarked for victim compensation to the US Treasury instead.
A pending, real-life case illustrates the harm wrought by such moves, and the financial injustice that results.
This February, several state attorneys general began restitution inquiries owed by Prehired, LLC. Earlier, CFPB determined…
Read the full article here
