Trump appointee takes over consumer financial agency, starting with reconsideration of the payday rule

Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s temporary pick to head the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, announced Wednesday a wall-to-wall review of the agency’s “enforcement, supervision, rulemaking, market monitoring, and education activities.” On Tuesday, Mulvaney announced that he would reconsider the recently finalized payday lending rule.

“Trump agent Mick Mulvaney is inviting financial predators to help him dismantle consumer safeguards so that payday lenders and Wall Street banks once again can prey on millions of Americans,” said Bart Naylor, financial policy advocate for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division.

Under the direction of Obama appointee Richard Cordray, the bureau returned more than $12 billion to about 28 million victims and undertook thoughtful analysis before finalizing sensible rules, Naylor said.

“That’s why Congress created the CFPB: to protect consumers,” he said. “That’s why they named it the ‘consumer protection’ bureau.”

Now, financial firms whose business models rely on scams and rip-offs, may defang the consumer agency and write rules that invite more lucrative deceptions, Naylor said.

“Look no further than yesterday’s announcement that Mulvaney will reconsider the payday lending rule, a sensible safeguard against debt traps, to see what’s in store,” he said.

Mulvaney also announced Wednesday he was launching a review of the entire operation of bureau. In addition to heading the bureau, he’s Trump’s budget director.

“I don’t think anyone in this administration is more of a right-wing conservative than I am,” Mulvaney is quoted as saying of himself, according to the Politico article “Mick the Knife.”