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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOur Governments Last Powerful, Progressive Regulator Just Resigned
I am feeling really shook up by this resignation for some reason.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/11/our-governments-last-progressive-regulator-just-resigned.html
Our Governments Last Powerful, Progressive Regulator Just Resigned
Richard Cordray. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Donald Trump has delivered the regulatory state into the arms of its enemies. The president made Big Energys favorite attorney general his head of environmental protection; a lawyer who made millions representing banks and hedge funds his SEC director; an evangelist for the prosperity gospel his head of public housing; Microsofts former attorney his top enforcer of antitrust law; and a skeptic of government schools his Education secretary.
But there was one arm of the administrative state that Trump couldnt or wouldnt dismantle: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Dreamed up by Elizabeth Warren, and implemented by the Obama administration, the agency enjoys broad, independent authority to protect American consumers from financial scams.
So, of course, our populist president was eager to gut the bureau. But the progressive head of the CFPB, Richard Cordray, was set to remain in place until July 2018. Trump could, technically, fire him for cause before that date. And the administration considered it, but quickly concluded the politics were too toxic. As the New York Times reported:
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But now, Cordray is gone. On Wednesday, one of the federal governments last powerful progressives announced that he will be resigning by months end.
I am confident that you will continue to move forward, nurture this institution we have built together, and maintain its essential value to the American public, Cordray wrote in an email to his staff.
Cordrays confidence may not be justified. To this point, the agency has successfully pursued its mission, despite the hostility of a Republican administration. Over the past 11 months, the CFPB has recovered $61 million from fraudulent debt collectors, cracked down on payday lenders, and made it possible for consumers to launch class-action lawsuits against financial firms.
But congressional Republicans promptly killed that last rule. And whoever Trump puts in Cordrays place is all but certain to prevent the agency from producing new regulations that significantly limit Wall Streets capacity to profit off of consumer exploitation...........................
Eliot Rosewater
(31,151 posts)OnDoutside
(19,987 posts)blueinredohio
(6,797 posts)He's a bigger baby and crook than Trump
OnDoutside
(19,987 posts)Vital job.
BigmanPigman
(51,674 posts)His position will not be filled at all, will be replaced with someone who is incompetent and inexperienced, or replaced with someone who purposely destroys the bureau. This is life in Bizarro World.
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,831 posts)He was so good at his job.
I miss him already.
RIP, CFPB.