Trump administration strips consumer watchdog office of enforcement powers in lending discrimination
Source: The Washington Post
By Renae Merle February 1 at 12:54 PM
The Trump administration has stripped enforcement powers away from Consumer Financial Protection Bureau office that specializes in pursuing cases against financial firms for breaking discrimination laws, according to two people familiar with the matter and emails reviewed by The Washington Post.
The move comes about two months after President Trump installed his budget chief Mick Mulvaney at the head of an agency that has long been in the cross-hairs of Republicans. The Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity had imposed penalties on lenders that it said had systematically imposed higher interest rates on minorities than whites.
Now that office, which had been part a powerful CFPB division, will move inside the office of director, where staffers will be focused on “advocacy, coordination and education,” according to an email Mulvaney sent them this week. They will no longer have responsibility for enforcement and day-to-day oversight of companies, he said.
Instead, those responsibilities will remain with the division of Supervision, Enforcement, and Fair Lending, which conducts oversight and enforcement actions in a wide range of cases of financial wrongdoing. The Office of Fair Lending had previously been part of this division.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/02/01/trump-administration-strips-consumer-watchdog-office-of-enforcement-powers-against-financial-firms-in-lending-discrimination-cases/
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