Mick Mulvaney may be the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but he hates the agency. Hates the whole idea of the agency. In addition to attempting to scramble the name of the agency to make it sound less welcoming to people concerned about predatory loans and credit card schemes, Mulvaney has also promised that from now on, he will stop enforcing rules about discriminatory auto loans and hide complaints so that bankers don’t have to worry.
Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Mick Mulvaney vowed to bankers on Tuesday that he would halt the agency’s actions against indirect auto dealers, stop posting consumer complaints online and change the bureau's name.
But that’s not the best news that Mulvaney had for bankers. He offered them some … advice. Very specific advice on how they could end the CFPB completely, get any regulations out of their way, and go back to the robust and entrepreneurial environment that brought American banking so many good things in 2008.
“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker from South Carolina, told 1,300 bankers and lending industry officials at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”
Mick Mulvaney, head of the White House Office of Management and Budget Office and acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is actively telling bankers that he won’t listen to them if they do not bribe him to do so. More than that, he’s confessing—though that word seems wrong, considering that Mulvaney clearly has no shame about what he’s saying—that he has operated on bribes from the beginning of his career.
And that’s not the end of it. Mulvaney didn’t just encourage the bankers to bribe him if they wanted their way. He told them to go out and buy themselves more Republicans.
Mr. Mulvaney said that trying to sway legislators was one of the “fundamental underpinnings of our representative democracy. And you have to continue to do it.”
In one quick speech, Mulvaney not only vows to disassemble the agency he’s running and remove protections for consumers he:
- Tells them the best way to get things done is through bribery
- Informs them that he has always been open to bribes
- Encourages them to go out and do more bribery
Mick Mulvaney stood in front of a public forum and told them that he prioritized the views of people who lined his pocket. Which is a confession of a crime. There is no other way to put it. He’s not putting forward any pretense about listening to all his constituents, or saying that the people who put money in his coffers got a hearty thank you and a nice Christmas card. He’s flat-out admitting that his actions in the Congress and the White House are motivated by the delivery of cash on the barrel-head.
Then he’s encouraging bankers to commit this crime repeatedly if they want to get the agency he’s already wrecking completely out of the way. He’s not just holding out his hand, his soliciting additional bribes for his friends.
In the meantime, while waiting for his cash delivery, Mulvaney is going to “protect” consumers by hiding any crimes the bankers commit.
“I don’t see anything in here that says I have to make all of this public,” he said. “We are going to maintain the consumer database. It is mandated by law,” but “I don’t see anything in here that I have to run a Yelp for financial services sponsored by the federal government.”
So it will be a consumer database that consumers cannot access. And Mulvaney will be chuckling all the way to the bankers … with his hand extended. Mulvaney isn’t just admitting a crime and soliciting a crime, he’s reveling in crime. And laughing at the poor saps that can’t afford to buy his favor.
This isn’t something that calls for an inspector general report. It calls for a prosecuting attorney. Now.