re: Frightening article about the CFPB by a former employee.

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What if Wells Fargo opens a bunch of new accounts in your name without your permission or knowledge, what do you think your remedy should be?

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Funny you should bring that up. From the article:

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On September 8, 2016, Wells Fargo paid the CFPB, the Los Angeles city attorney, and the comptroller of the currency $185 million in penalties for bank employees’ having opened millions of unauthorized customer accounts since 2011. External Affairs’ media blitz and the bureau’s $100 million share of the penalties created the illusion that Enforcement had led a heroic investigation. CFPB supporters, with Pavlovian predictability, shamed Republicans for attempting to weaken the agency.

But the settlement reserved only a few million dollars in restitution for victims. Enforcement didn’t advance consumer lawsuits by making the bank admit wrongdoing, and it didn’t do much to help criminal prosecutors beyond giving the Department of Justice legally mandated evidence.

Congressional hearings revealed that two years of examinations, thousands of bank-employee firings, and numerous complaints had failed to get the bureau’s attention before the Los Angeles Times published a detailed exposé late in 2013. Worse yet, from 2013 to 2016, the CFPB took no action while the bank continued the incentive program that drove the unauthorized account openings. Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf and Carrie Tolstedt, the executive overseeing the program, earned tens of millions of dollars. Tolstedt retired with a huge nest egg two months before the settlement.

The CFPB had waited while the city attorney and OCC completed their investigations, and then negotiated its headline-grabbing penalty. A month after the settlement, it was clear that simply taking regulatory action to highlight the severity of the fraud had triggered the real wake-up call for bank executives. Wells Fargo’s stock lost billions of dollars in value, and its board clawed back $60 million from Stumpf and Tolstedt before firing Stumpf. The $100 million penalty may deter future violations, but no more so than a smaller fine or a CFPB lawsuit would have three years earlier.

During Senate hearings, Cordray implied that Enforcement had stood down because all available personnel were busy investigating deceptive credit-card add-on products and other violations. In doing so, he inadvertently revealed that the campaign to expand the bureau’s reach to car dealers had diverted limited resources from mission-critical tasks.

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So whats your solution?

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normal civil and criminal litigation?

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Do you want to have the same amount of regulation pre-recession?

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i want less, because regulation in many ways created the scenario underlying the bubble and crash

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What if Wells Fargo opens a bunch of bew accounts in your name without your permission or knowledge, what do you think your remedy should be?

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normal civil remedies? possibly an FTC violation and/or criminal penalties? what, exactly, does the CFPB add?

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Their stories make the CFPB sound like a useful institution that actually does help ordinary Americans when normally they'd be powerless against entities like Chase, Bank of America, or Citigroup.

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Classic technique. “Big brother, will you beat up these meanie-heads” is a great method of getting people behind a government wanting to sieze more power.

The formula is simple: pick some unpopular group (Banks during s recession,”the rich”, ISPs, terrorists, Jews) then tell the masses “we will go after those meanie-heads” and those blinded by their hate will drop all rationality and objectivity to back you. They will back obviously bad ideas, cede their rights, and hand over their money in droves.

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So whats your solution? Its easy to conplain. Do you want to have the same amount of regulation pre-recession? What if Wells Fargo opens a bunch of bew accounts in your name without your permission or knowledge, what do you think your remedy should be?

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If you read the article genius, you'd know that the CFPB didn't do shite about the Wells Fargo scam for over 5 years. The LA City Attorney and the OOC were the ones who did the whole investigation and lawsuit. CFPB piled on after it was over, slapped a huge fine on them, then proceeded to act like they were the heroes in the media. Seems to have worked on the weak minded as yourself.