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DesideriScuri -> RE: Wells Fargo Just Made The Case For Warren’s Bank Agency (9/10/2016 8:57:04 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Lucylastic
Wells Fargo just proved, again, that no scam is beneath America’s financial institutions. And no institution is above being watched by a federal agency.
On Thursday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ― the watchdog group proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D. Mass.) in the aftermath of the financial crisis ― announced that Wells Fargo would pony up a total of $185 million for perpetrating a huge scam on its customers.
Over at least the past five years, Wells Fargo employees created more than 1.5 million sham checking accounts and applied for 565,000 credit cards, using customer names and money. Customers were charged unnecessary fees, saw their credit scores fall or were simply confused when debit and credit cards they never asked for showed up in the mail.
“Was the Great Financial Crisis so long ago that all chasteness and propriety are already out the window? This scam has been apparently going on for five years,” writes Josh Brown, a financial blogger. “These people are fearless.”
We never take for granted the trust our customers have placed in us.
Prominent display text in the Wells Fargo 2015 annual report
The CFPB has come under intense criticism from Republicans, who say it’s a drag on business. Many ― including presidential hopeful Donald Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence ― have said they would like to see the agency abolished as part of their intended dismantling of the 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation passed to prevent another economic meltdown.
But every time the agency exposes wrongdoing in consumer banking ― as it did on Thursday ― the CFPB offers a strong counterpoint to those arguments.
The job of the CFPB, now headed by Richard Cordray, isn’t to regulate the hot new derivative investment banks are peddling to hedge funds. It’s to protect ordinary people from the kind of everyday scams that financial institutions have shown again and again that they will commit if no one is watching. The agency oversees a myriad of businesses like consumer banking, debt collection and payday loans that hundreds of millions of Americans use every day.
It’s had an impact. Last year, the CFPB fined Citibank for illegal credit card practices after the bank was found to be charging customers for benefits they didn’t receive. It’s uncovered student loan fraud and financial products that take advantage of the elderly, and is looking to crack down on the payday loan industry.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wells-fargo-fraud_us_57d2d237e4b03d2d459a083c?
The CFPB's earlier actions with a different entity could end up being reversed.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/legalnewsline/2016/07/19/fall-decision-could-reverse-cfpbs-actions-change-structure/#699594a551ef
The CFPB might get slammed as being an unConstitutional Federal agency...
https://www.cfpbmonitor.com/2016/04/14/16547/
According the CFPB Wiki entry:quote:
According to Director Richard Cordray, the Bureau's priorities are mortgages, credit cards and student loans.[3][4] It was designed to consolidate employees and responsibilities from a number of other federal regulatory bodies, including the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration and even the Department of Housing and Urban Development.[5] The bureau is an independent unit located inside and funded by the United States Federal Reserve, with interim affiliation with the U.S. Treasury Department. It writes and enforces rules for financial institutions, examines both bank and non-bank financial institutions, monitors and reports on markets, as well as collects and tracks consumer complaints.[4]
The [4] citation is a Reuter's staff blog.
Congress created (through Dodd-Frank) an agency that is paid for and falls under the jurisdiction of, the Federal Reserve (which isn't a Federal agency, but a private one). It is, pretty much, taking responsibilities and authorities from several actual Federal agencies, and moving them under the jurisdiction of a quasi-governmental agency (because the other agencies, effectively, sucked at their oversight roles). And, this agency can write rules and regulations?
We're allowing a non-Federal agency to write Federal rules and regulations over a large swath of the economy?!? Why dafuq would John Q. and Jane Q. Public want that?!?
I wonder if those Federal agencies that gave up some of their responsibilities and authorities also had cuts in $$ and staff commensurate with those reductions.
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