Did I Mention The CFPB?

I did, Thursday — the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — which, along with the EPA, the Republicans are thrilled to see gutted.

What was Nixon thinking when he signed the Environmental Protection Agency into law?  Science/schmience — if Detroit wants weaker fuel-efficiency standards, the glaciers will just have to not melt.  Jesus has our back on climate change.

Same with consumers.

If the young woman described in this must-listen Planet Money podcast didn’t read the fine print before she borrowed $900 on-line from Golden Valley Lending, how can she complain that Golden Valley scooped $3,735 out of her bank account in less than a year to settle the debt? 

To Democrats, capitalism should be regulated.  Obama’s CFPB was pursuing Golden Valley on her behalf — and on behalf of everyone else who had been — or might be — similarly brutalized.

To Republicans, not so much.  The Trump CFPB — run by a former South Carolina congressman who introduced a bill to kill the CFPB altogether and so was Trump’s choice to lead it — dropped the case.  Golden Valley did nothing wrong and need not change its ways.  If your daughter, desperate to avoid eviction and too embarrassed to ask you to help with $900, needs someplace to turn, maybe she’ll stumble upon Golden Valley.

(Trump has also gutted the State Department, with awful long-term consequences for our standing in the world and perhaps world peace itself; and is undermining trust in the FBI and our intelligence agencies; and in the free press that undergirds democracy.  But I don’t see most Republicans in the House and Senate actively approving of those initiatives in the way they actively work to cripple the EPA and kill the CFPB.)