The Dodd-Frank financial reform law spawned more than a raft of regulations; it also created a new regulatory arm of government: the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Five years after being formed, the bureau has more than 1,600 employees, an operating budget of almost $680m and offices in Washington, New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Its jurisdiction covers a wide variety of financial services marketed to everyday Americans, including mortgages, credit cards, student loans and payday loans. With Donald Trump in the White House, promising to make America more business-friendly, critics of the agency see an opening to weaken the new regulator on the block. 1. What’s the case against the bureau? Republican lawmakers and the financial industry say its scope is too broad and its powers too strong, maybe unconstitutionally so. As an independent agency within another independent agency, the Federal Reserve, the CFPB has an unusual (though not unique) level of autonomy fro...
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