Tag Archives: Richard Cordray

No Wonder Richard Cordray Wanted To Choose His Successor!

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The Gateway Pundit is reporting today that a whistleblower within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has come forward. According to her statement, falsified information was used against certain businesses, and then the money obtained by fines was funneled into left-wing groups.

The article reports:

In a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former CFPB staffer Cassandra Jackson, accused the agency’s managers of “widespread racism and gender discrimination.” Jackson also accused the agency of forcing her to falsify evidence to justify fines against a pay-day lender. 

…“I was specifically told to cite Ace Cash Express for a violation for which I had verified the company was in compliance and to state that Ace Cash Express did not provide, and that the CFPB did not receive, documents that would have satisfied the CFPB’s guidelines, despite having received that information from Ace Cash Express,” Jackson wrote to Sessions.

“I encourage you to initiate an investigation into this matter, as well as civil rights violations at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” Jackson said. “During my nearly five years at the Bureau, I encountered widespread racism and gender discrimination from management,” added Jackson.

The article concludes:

Everything from amassing secret ledgers to using penalties to ‘launder,’ funds into left-wing causes. Of course, because the CFPB operates independently of the U.S. Government, a full audit of the agency’s balance sheet have never been done. This sad reality may very well change under Mulvaney’s leadership.

The agency “Funnelled a large portion of the more than $5 billion in penalties collected from defendants to community organizers aligned with Democrats — “a slush fund by another name,” said a consultant who worked with CFPB on its Civil Penalty Fund and requested anonymity.”

Advocacy group, The U.S. Consumer Coalition, was the source of Jackson’s damning letter.

“Ms. Jackson is a dedicated public servant who believes in the mission of the CFPB,” said Brian J. Wise, president of the U.S. Consumer Coalition. “Unfortunately, her claims are all too familiar to the dedicated employees serving under the direction of CFPB management,” wrote a spokesperson for the organization.

Does anyone believe that had Richard Cordray been able to name the agency’s deputy director, Leandra English, to succeed him that any of these practices would have changed. Now because President Trump has appointed Mick Mulvaney, currently the White House budget director, as interim director of the CFPB, there is a chance that some of the questionable (if not illegal) practices of the CFPB will end. The CFPB is part of the swamp that needs to be drained.

Do Some Democrats Even Read The Law?

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The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today about the change in leadership at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The current director, Richard Cordray, is resigning from the position. There are some constitutional problems with the CFPB, in that it is accountable to no one–not even the voters.

The article reports:

A federal court found the CFPB Director position held too much power and deemed it unconstitutional. The court decision noted that giving the President power to fire the Director would fix the constitutional problem.

Senator Elizabeth Warren is complaining that with the resignation of Cordray, the directorship should automatically go to the Deputy Director. Instead, President Trump is planning to appoint Mick Mulvaney as temporary head of the agency until a permanent person can be appointed. Senator Warren has tweeted that this is unacceptable.

However, the article goes on to explain why President Trump’s appointment of a temporary director would be legal:

President Trump has power to appoint the interim or ‘acting‘ head of the agency in the case of a vacancy just like he would any other vacancy. [Important Reminder: A DC appellate court already ruled the legal issues with the CFPB Director position necessitate oversight by the executive branch.] The President fills the vacancy using the familiar mechanism of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA); until such time as a permanent replacement is nominated and confirmed by the Senate.

The Dodd-Frank statute Warren cites doesn’t provide a mechanism in case of vacancy. It has a provision for when the Director is “absent” or “unavailable”, both considered temporary terms by design, but not when the Director-ship is “vacant”.

The resigning director, Richard Cordray, (who resigned from a confirmed position) cannot appoint his replacement; that responsibility falls to the President.

Nowhere in Dodd-Frank statute does congress say they are repealing Federal Vacancies Reform Act for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Therefore FVRA applies to CFPB regardless of whether Senator Warren likes the designated person assigned, or not.

Please follow the link to the original article to read the entire story. It is much more colorful than what I have posted here!

Wise Advice From The People Who Know

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Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This bureau was part of the Dodd-Frank legislation aimed at taking the focus away from the actual cause of the financial meltdown of 2008.

For those of you who are new to this website, the following video is the best analysis of the financial crisis of 2008 available. I have embedded it because at some point YouTube will probably take it down.

Dodd-Frank put a stranglehold on business growth and punished people who were not responsible for the crisis. However, those who like big government and wanted more power pushed the narrative that resulted in Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The current head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray, has announced that he will resign at the end of November. Investor’s Business Daily suggests that instead of naming a replacement, President Trump should simply shut the agency down.

The editorial at Investor’s Business Daily reminds us of some of the history of the agency:

An October 2016 Supreme Court ruling found CFPB’s structure to be unconstitutional, a violation of the separation of powers in the nation’s supreme law.

One element of the high court’s decision was that Cordray could only be fired by the president for cause — making it very hard to get rid of even an incompetent in the job. Worse, by funding the CFPB from the Federal Reserve, not Congress, the agency lay just outside the direct oversight of Congress. It had massive power over finance in the U.S. economy, with little or no accountability. Cordray did little or nothing to remedy this.

“We are long overdue for new leadership at the CFPB,” said House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas. “The extreme overregulation it imposes on our economy leads to higher costs and less access to financial products and services, particularly with lower and middle incomes.”

The editorial concludes:

From nothing in 2010, the agency now employs more than 1,600 people, with $647 million in budgeted spending last year and another $525 million in civil penalty fines — often collected without any due process for those who were forced to pay up.

Last January, Michael McGrady wrote on The Daily Caller website, “Like every new government program, (CFPB) became a corrupt political bargaining chip in Obama’s administration with the sole mission to assert government supremacy over the economy.” Nothing has changed since then. As we’ve said before, shut it down.

Think of the savings for taxpayers!

Removing Common Sense From The Small Business Loan Department

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Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about a new regulation on small business lending. Before leaving office, President Obama is attempting to recreate the mortgage bubble that led to the crash of 2008. This time the crash will be created in the area of commercial loans to small businesses.

The article reports:

The White House complains minority-owned firms don’t have the same access to credit as others. But the result of this new political scrutiny is easy to see: Commercial lenders will be pressured to lower standards, leading to riskier lending and higher defaults (see: mortgage bust, ’08).

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has carved out a new executive-level position: “assistant director of small-business lending markets,” which will lead an unprecedented collection of race-based data about loans to “minority-owned businesses.”

Meanwhile, CFPB Director of Fair Lending Patrice Ficklin said the bureau is starting its first fair-lending-focused exams of business lenders. Specifically, regulators will look at “small-business loan underwriting criteria” to see if it has a discriminatory “disparate impact” on minority business owners applying for credit. Marketplace lending will also be under the microscope.

The move is a result of a letter written by 84 House Democrats and 19 Senate Democrats (comprised mostly of Congressional Black Caucus members) to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Cordray asking him to require all lending institutions to disclose the race of small-business owners who apply for loans and the outcome of loan applications. The supposed outcome of this is to remove ‘barriers to small-business creation.’ The actual outcome of this will be that risky loans will be required and banks and institutions that make small business loans will begin to lose money and threaten the economic health of the nation.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has asked Director Cordray to collect the data to make it easier to enforce fail lending laws. Again, we are going to be divided according to race rather than encouraged to work together.

Statistically African-American business owners are more likely to default on business loans. Banks and commercial lenders have to consider that when they make loans. This sort of interference with free market economics can only hurt the economy–not help it. I am against denying anyone a loan because of their race, but I am also against giving someone a loan because of their race. There can be some flexibility in granting these loans, but there also has to be some common sense in protecting the lenders and the people who finance the loans.

The article concludes:

Yet as with mortgages, the assumption is that underwriting standards are racist and must be made more flexible, risks be damned. Since business loans default at higher rates than mortgages, another government-sponsored financial crisis won’t be far behind.

Hold on to your hat.

Recess Appointments Can Only Be Made When Congress Is Actually In Recess

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USA Today is reporting today that the Supreme Court has ruled that several recess appointments made by President Obama in 2012 were invalid. The ruling against President Obama’s recess appointments was unanimous; however, four of the justices wanted to restrict the President’s power to make recess appointments.

The article reports:

The high court’s ruling means that hundreds of decisions made by the labor board while dominated by Obama’s recess appointees in 2012 and half of 2013 will be called into question. The new five-member board, including four members since approved by the Senate, will have to revisit those cases. Consumer protection chief Richard Cordray has since been confirmed by the Senate, so he can reaffirm his prior actions.

This is the second unanimous Supreme Court decision in two days–yesterday the Court ruled that police required a search warrant to search the information on a suspect’s cell phone.

If This Decision Stands, What Happens Next ?

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The Daily Caller (along with many other news sources) is reporting today that the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has ruled that President Obama’s appointments to the National Labor Relations Board made during the time that the President declared that the Senate was in recess are unconstitutional. The President does not have the power to declare whether or not the Senate is in recess–that is up to the Senate.

The article reports:

The Jan. 25 ruling came after Republican senators filed a case arguing that Obama did not have the power to appoint top-level officials via a “recess appointment” if the Senate says it is in session.

Obama made that claim when he announced the appointment of two people to the National Labor Relations Board in January 2012.

The appointments allowed the board to subsequently issue a series of pro-labor, anti-business decisions. Following the court’s ruling, the board’s decisions are now vulnerable to a series of lawsuits.

Obama used the same claim to appoint Democratic lawyer Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in January 2012.

The Landmark Legal Foundation further explains:

…three appointments to the five-member NLRB by President Obama made on January 4, 2012, under the Constitution’s Recess Appointments Clause (Article II, Section 2, Clause 3), were not valid  because the Senate was not in recess at the time the appointments were announced. 

There have been a number of rulings by the NLRB and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since these recess appointments. Theoretically all those actions will be nullified because the people making the decisions were not legally entitled to make them.

The specific case that was ruled on was Noel Canning v. National Labor Relations Board. I am sure that we have not heard the end of this.