In the recent slashing and burning of various government workers and agencies during the early days of the second Trump administration, one of the institutions targeted was the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The agency was created in 2008 in response to the subprime mortgage crash to create at least some guardrails to protect consumers from questionable financial practices by banks and credit card companies. While the agency did not make the capitalist system fundamentally less volatile or exploitative, it did offer some protections for working class people from predatory financial practices such as extravagant fees, putting false information in people’s credit reports, wrongly charging overdraft fees, scams that pose as credit repair companies, and more. Over the past 14 years, the agency has refunded $21 billion to over 200 million Americans. It was in the process of removing medical debt from credit reports. Now that the CFPB has been dismantled, it just makes it easier for the rich to fleece us.
When Donald Trump talks about “America First,” does he really mean “American Banks and Corporations First”? Who would have thought.
