The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Hurting Those it Was Designed to Protect?

Fox Business Network Online covers CEI’s “Case against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” by Iain Murray.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been a source of contention among lawmakers on Capitol Hill since it was introduced in the wake of the financial crisis and a new report released Thursday by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) outlines multiple ways the agency actually subverts its own mission of protecting individuals, ultimately inflicting more pain than promise.

“The agency is … actively harming consumers, pressing ahead with regulations even when the benefit to consumers is likely to be outweighed by the costs,” said Iain Murray, vice president for strategy at CEI and author of the report.

CEI argues that, despite the fact that the CFPB returned about $12 billion to 29 million consumers over the past six years, some of those cases include instances where the victories belong to other actors. For example, it lists the Wells Fargo fraudulent account scandal as an instance where the CFPB missed the fraud – until it was made public by The Los Angeles Times.

Murray also believes the CFPB’s arbitration rule transfers wealth from consumers to lawyers, that its proposed rule on small-dollar loans would kill access to loans for the people who need them most and that it kills lending and mergers among regional banks and credit unions through excess regulation.

Read the full article at Fox Business Network Online.