A consultant who worked with the highly politicized Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) claims the organization funneled a large portion of over $5 billion in collected penalties to "community organizers aligned with Democrats" as part of a giant slush fund, the Post reports.
[The CFPB] Funneled a large portion of the more than $5 billion in penalties collected from defendants to community organizers aligned with Democrats — “a slush fund by another name,” said a consultant who worked with CFPB on its Civil Penalty Fund and requested anonymity.
Created six years ago as the brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren and slipped into the Dodd Frank bill before it was passed by Congressional Democrats, the CFPB became one of the most powerful agencies in D.C., with the ability to exercise enormous power over the U.S. economy while its budget remained unencumbered by congressional oversight. As one Hill writer put it:
The problem is that this agency and its director were set up to be free from the control of the Congress. Congress’s fundamental obligation to oversee and fund such bureaus or agencies is short-circuited when it comes to the CFPB. In structuring it in the manner written by now-Sen. Warren (D-Mass.), the law abrogated the idea of a government by the people, for the people and of the people.
Instead, it established an autocratic and unaccountable power center for people of Warren’s ideological persuasion — those who view our market economy as an enemy that must be managed by a chosen few. The creation of the CFPB as a rogue agency with a dictatorial leader is one of the most significant acts of malfeasance perpetrated on the American constitutional system since the Sedition Acts of 1798.
The reins of the CFPB were handed over to Trump appointee Mick Mulvaney last week following the resignation of Director Richard Cordray, but not before Deputy Director Leandra English's unsuccessful attempt to block Mulvaney's appointment in a complaint filed against Trump and Mulvaley in a DC court.
After a Federal judge ruled that Mulvaney is now acting director of the CFPB – his first order of business was to institute a 30-day freeze on all new hiring and regulations.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, has been a total disaster as run by the previous Administrations pick. Financial Institutions have been devastated and unable to properly serve the public. We will bring it back to life!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 25, 2017
Both President Trump and Mick Mulvaney have had strong opinions about the CFPB in the past, with Mulvaney saying “It is a completely unaccountable agency, and I think that’s wrong,” and adding “If the law allowed this place not to exist, I’d sit down with the president to try to make the case that other agencies can do this job well if not more effectively.” Mulvaney also called the agency "a sad, sick joke."
Aside from the $5 billion "slush fund" detailed in the Post, the CFPB has also engaged in the following:
- Bounced business owners and industry reps from secret meetings it’s held with Democrat operatives, radical civil-rights activists, trial lawyers and other “community advisers,” according to a report by the House Financial Services Committee.
- Retained GMMB, the liberal advocacy group that created ads for the Obama and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns, for more than $40 million, making the Democrat shop the sole recipient of CFPB’s advertising expenditure, Rubin says.
- Met behind closed doors to craft financial regulatory policy with notorious bank shakedown groups who have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grant money to gin up housing and lending discrimination complaints, which in turn are fed back to CFPB, according to Investor’s Business Daily and Judicial Watch.
Moreover, the CFPB secretly assembled several massive consumer databases which raise privacy and corporate liability concerns. "One sweeps up personal credit card information and another compiles data on as many as 230 million mortgage applicants focusing on “race” and “ethnicity.”" reports The Hill. Another database contains over 900,000 unvetted grievances against financial companies, points out Alan Kaplinsky, lead regulatory attorney for Ballard Spahr LLP.
Think a database of google's depth, but used solely by the government.
In this context, Mick Mulvaney appears to be the right tool for the President's vow to "put the regulations industry out of business," which he says will lead to higher employment and higher wages.
“If you’re wondering about his commitment to deregulation, don’t,” Mulvaney said in front of a libertarian gathering a few months ago, “because this is one of the things he pounds on again and again and again.”
via http://ift.tt/2zYf9Zq Tyler Durden