What a difference a day — or a couple of months — makes! The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued its five-year strategic plan in February, and boy does it paint a picture of a kinder, gentler CFPB. Well, maybe neither kind nor gentle, but I’ll settle for an agency interested in all of its stakeholders.
That seems to be the direction the CFPB is headed. In his prefatory statement, Acting Director Mick Mulvaney summarized the CFPB’s strategic shift like this:
“[W]e have committed to fulfill the bureau’s statutory responsibilities, but go no further. Indeed, this should be an ironclad promise for any federal agency; pushing the envelope in pursuit of other objectives ignores the will of the American people, as established in law by their representatives in Congress and the White House. Pushing the envelope also risks trampling upon the liberties of our citizens, or interfering with the sovereignty or autonomy of the states or Indian tribes. I have resolved that this will not happen at the bureau.”
The plan provides for a new mission statement …
“To regulate the offering and provision of consumer financial products or services under the federal consumer financial laws and to educate and empower consumers to make better informed financial decisions.”
