In 'Enormous Loss for the American People,' Trump Fires CFPB Head Rohit Chopra
"For all the claims Trump and the GOP have made about being the voice of working-class voters, firing Chopra... only satisfies unscrupulous corporations and unelected billionaires like Elon Musk," one advocate said.
In case there was any doubt that Trump is not looking after the interests of the working class.
CFPB = Consumer Finance Protection Bureau
They are notably the only institution that had any teeth when dealing with big banks. If you had your funds locked and the bank was giving you the runaround, one of the fastest and most reliable ways to get a response was to file a CFPB complaint and tell the bank you were doing so.
It was one of the only bureaus that banks were legally obligated to respond to, and audits were famously a gigantic (and very expensive, in terms of man hours they were required to devote to it) pain in the ass. So if the CFPB got a complaint, it would light a fire under the bank manager’s ass to actually resolve your complaint and avoid the audit.
There are tons of stories along the lines of “I had been dealing with my bank for three weeks trying to get my money back from a bogus fee. I filed a complaint with the CFPB, and the bank manager called me 20 minutes later to let me know that my account had been refunded.”
"Since 2021, we have returned billions of dollars from repeat offenders and other bad actors, implemented dormant legal authorities and long-overdue rules required by law, and given more freedom and bargaining leverage to families navigating a complex and confusing financial system," he wrote.
"If civil society does its job, every person unnecessarily taken advantage of by a financial institution will attribute the blame to the right person—Donald Trump."
Chopra also touted the CFPB's regulation of junk fees, inaccurate medical bills, and digital surveillance by Big Tech. Under Chopra, the CFPB sued major financial institutions such as Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase and finalized a rule to strike around $49 billion worth of medical debt from credit reports, according to CNN.
With Chopra in charge, the bureau "has fought against junk fees, repeat offenders, big tech evasions, and corporate deception. It has championed competition, transparency, accountability, and consumer financial health," Adam Rust, director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America, said in a statement reported by NPR.
I'm sure it would have been just as bad under Kamala, though.
Holy shit.
The finding out part always suck