Free Republic

Get ready for another front on the debate over privacy, consumption, and the trade-off between them. Yesterday, Judicial Watch announced that they had received data through a FOIA demand that showed warrantless surveillance on 5 million American consumers — not for national-security reasons, but for the new Consumer Financial Protection Board. The documents show that the controversial panel has contracted out the service of trawling through millions of transactions, emphases in original: Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained records from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) revealing that the agency has spent millions of dollars for the warrantless...

Well America, it has continued to get piled higher and deeper. There was Benghazi – but wait, Congress doesn’t have time to fully investigate to find individuals responsible and hold them accountable; so, it’s swept under the rug. Congress can’t deal with Fast and Furious effectively; it goes the way of the dust on top of the door jamb: you know it’s there but can’t see it so forget about it. While the immigration bill, the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and the racially charged Zimmerman case had the focus...

Employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau aren’t just looking out for consumers’ interests — they’re looking out for their own jobs, too. The agency’s workforce voted last week to join the National Treasury Employees Union, a federal union that also represents employees at other financial regulators, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Securities and Exchange Commission. Why would employees at CFPB — an agency with liberal bona fides, generous compensation and top-notch benefits — want to form a union? The push to organize was driven in large part by news that...

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), chairman of the Financial Services Committee, has told Richard Cordray not to bother. This is part of the recent evidence that government is getting some adult supervision. Barack Obama used a recess appointment to make Cordray director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But a federal circuit court has declared unconstitutional three other recess appointments made the same day because the Senate was not in recess. So Hensarling has told Cordray not to testify before his committee: “Absent contrary guidance from the United States Supreme Court, you do not meet the statutory requirements of a validly...

The government mortgage giants Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae (FHA, VA) have a virtual monopoly on the mortgage insurance and securitization business. In an article written by former Freddie Mac employee, Nela Richardson, it is pointed out that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will set the benchmark for underwriting standards: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Qualified Mortgage rule, which is supposed to standardize underwriting practices across the industry once it takes effect in 2014, will have a negligible effect on the industry as long as Fannie and Freddie continue to dominate the market for mortgage funding. The companies...

Quietly, behind the scenes, the groundwork is being laid for federal government confiscation of tax-deferred retirement accounts such as IRAs. Slowly, the cat is being let out of the bag. Last January 18th, in a little noticed interview of Richard Cordray, acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Bloomberg reported "[t]he U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [CFPB] is weighing whether it should take on a role in helping Americans manage the $19.4 trillion they have put into retirement savings, a move that would be the agency's first foray into consumer investments." That thought generates some skepticism, as aptly expressed...

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is fighting to protect her “brainchild”, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). She also wants to support the nominated of Richard Cordray, the former Attorney General of Ohio, better known as “Robocop” for his attacks on banks and servicers over robosigning. True, robosigning foreclosures is sloppy, but there were apparently no economic harm to borrowers (that is, 100% of borrowers defaulted on their loans and the banks/servicers were trying to claim the house to mitigate losses). Yet the Attorneys’ General settlement went ahead despite no economic harm to borrowers. The settlement provides as much as $25...

Via Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, [ZH: We have discussed this threat over the past several years (must read).] The obvious concept is that when the government runs out of money, or they face a drying up in interest for its debt, they will come for the $19.4 trillion in American’s retirement accounts. It seems that day may be finally drawing near. I stopped contributing to my 401k back when I worked at Bernstein, and I will probably now have to give more serious consideration whether I want to take the penalty and move the funds out of my...

Senate Republicans are renewing their vow to block any nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) unless major changes are made to its structure. In a letter sent to President Obama on Friday, 43 Republican senators committed to refusing approval of any nominee to head the consumer watchdog until the bureau underwent significant reform. Lawmakers signing on to the letter included Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee. "The CFPB as created by the deeply flawed Dodd-Frank Act is one of the least accountable in Washington,"...

**SNIP** Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said the administration was forced to use recess appointments because of Republican intransigence. “In its frustration, this administration said ‘we were elected to govern,’” Durbin said. “And whether it’s the National Labor Relations Board or whatever they wanted to put people in place to govern.”

The Federal Reserve wants to avoid runaway inflation (or hyperinflation) while generating increased economic growth. So what is the cure for inflation? Slow down bank lending. But the cure might be worse than the problem itself. The Federal government has been commandeering private lending for a couple of decades and now has a virtual monopoly of certain types of lending. Examples include the mortgage market where (depending on the source) the government (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA) control 86-90% of the market. Student loans is another example where the government stepped in to guarantee loans at taxpayer expense....

President Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on a labor relations panel, a federal appeals court panel ruled Friday. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that Obama did not have the power to make three recess appointments last year to the National Labor Relations Board. The unanimous decision is an embarrassing setback for the president, who made the appointments after Senate Republicans spent months blocking his choices for an agency they contended was biased in favor of unions. The ruling also throws into question Obama's recess...

There can be unseemly exposure of the mind as well as of the body, as the progressive mind is exposed in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a creature of the labyrinthine Dodd-Frank legislation. Judicial dismantling of the CFPB would affirm the rule of law and CongressÂ’s constitutional role. The CFPBÂ’s director, Richard Cordray, was installed by one of Barack ObamaÂ’s spurious recess appointmentswhen the Senate was not in recess. Vitiating the SenateÂ’s power to advise and consent to presidential appointments is congruent with the CFPBÂ’s general lawlessness. The CFPB nullifies CongressÂ’s power to use the power of the purse...

(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration named Holly Petraeus--wife of retired Gen. David Patraeus, who resigned last week as CIA director after revealing he had had an extramarital affair--to a $187,605-per-yer job in the newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB, created by the Dodd-Frank law, was placed by that law under the umbrella of the Federal Reserve. The funding of the CFBP, which comes from the Federal Reserve, is not subject to congressional oversight. Mrs. Petraeus became a member of the CFPB Implementation Team on Jan. 12, 2011. She is now the assistant director for the Office of...

This isn't the first time I have written about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or waste and abuse in the federal government. I have opined on more than one occasion that the powers given to the CFPB were suspect. This is especially true since their funding doesn't even have to go through Congress. With a funding setup like that, one can't help but wonder who will watch the CFPB, while they are supposedly watching out for the American taxpayer. This is, however, the first time the CFPB and waste and abuse have been tied together. They are getting off to...

The companies that determine Americans' credit scores are about to come under government oversight for the first time. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Monday that it will start supervising the 30 largest firms that make up 94 percent of the industry. That includes the three big credit reporting firms: Equifax Inc., Experian and TransUnion. In remarks prepared for a speech Monday, Richard Cordray, the government agency's director, said that scorekeeping by credit bureaus plays such a large role in Americans' financial lives, it requires scrutiny.

A Texas community bank and two advocacy groups are filing suit in U.S. District Court to challenge the constitutionality of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. In particular, the suit will contend that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), created by the law, lacks sufficient checks and balances and, in the words of the CEO of State National Bank, is "simply unconstitutional." “No other federal agency or commission operates in such a way that one person can essentially determine who gets a home loan, who can get a credit card and who can get a loan for college,” said bank head...

This is truly Orwellian: the latest and greatest Executive Branch/Federal Reserve power grab is labeled "consumer protection." I am indebted to correspondent Jim S. who seems to be one of the few Americans to have actually sorted through this monstrosity and gleaned its true nature: an unprecedented extension of Executive (i.e. Imperial Presidency) and Federal Reserve power.

Whatever happened to the American dream of going to college, landing a great job and living happily ever after? College is supposed to be about getting off to a great start, but it’s a financial noose that threatens to kill our young and everybody else too. The U.S. has the dubious distinction of now having more than $1 trillion in outstanding student loan debt. The crisis has the full attention of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which in a recent blog , presented its sobering findings. “Unlike other consumer credit products, student debt keeps growing at a steady clip. Students...

Republican senators announced Friday that they plan to challenge President Obama's recent controversial appointments in court. Thirty-nine GOP senators have signed onto a letter announcing their intention to file a joint amicus brief in a court challenge against Obama's recess appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board last month. "We refuse to stand by as this President arrogantly casts aside our Constitution and defies the will of the American people under the election-year guise of defending them," Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in a statement. The White House has argued that the recess appointments...