Trump admin drops 5 consumer watchdog cases
On the campaign trail, President Trump promised Americans that he would do things very differently compared to the way Joe Biden ran America into the ground during his four years as America's President.
Big changes are coming already.
According to Reuters, "The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Thursday dropped five enforcement actions against financial services companies accused of wrongdoing under the prior administration, including a major case against Capital One."
The decision "eviscerated much of the CFPB's remaining stable of legal actions against financial services companies investigated for abusive and predatory practices," Yahoo published.
"Unprecedented"
The mass dismissals mean that the CFPB is pretty much powerless in these cases, but Donald Trump doesn't appear ready to stop there.
Trump allegedly wants to dismantle the CFPB and is rapidly moving to do exactly that.
The reason Trump has such a problem with the CFPB is because of how politicized the agency has become. Trump wants to run his government based on what's best for the American people. While Joe Biden and Barack Obama were in office, they ran the government based on what was in the best interest of America's liberal elite.
Jonathan McKernan, who Trump has tasked with leading the CFPB and cleaning it up, was on Capitol Hill testifying before the Senate in a confirmation hearing when Trump's administration dropped the five consumer watchdog cases.
Despite the fate of the CFPB looking grim, McKernan assured lawmakers he would continue to take action to protect America's consumers if confirmed.
Capital One case
Perhaps the biggest case out of the five that Trump's administration dismissed was the case against Capital One which accuses the bank of cheating customers out of more than $2 BILLION in interest payments.
Former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra talked about the case against Capital One when it began:
"The CFPB is suing Capital One for cheating families out of billions of dollars on their savings accounts. Banks should not be baiting people with promises they can’t live up to."
According to ConsumerFinance.gov:
Capital One, N.A. is a national bank with more than $480 billion in assets and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE: COF). Both entities are headquartered in McLean, VA. Capital One offers multiple deposit account products.
In 2012, Capital One acquired online bank ING Direct USA, including its online savings account product, “ING Direct,” which was known for having higher-than-average interest rates. In 2013, Capital One rebranded “ING Direct” as “360 Savings,” and started offering 360 Savings accounts to the general public.
Despite the savings account product being touted as a "high-interest account," customers were only awarded a .3% interest rate, even as other banks across America kept raising their offers.
Do you think that this case should have been allowed to play out, or was the Trump administration right to drop it?