Trump's chief of staff and acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Mick Mulvaney, has apparently decided that the agency would be better off without the 25-member advisory board that provides feedback to him as the acting director.
The Washington Post reports that Mulvaney has fired the entire board and won't replace them until later this year.
On Wednesday, group members were notified that they were being replaced — and that they could not reapply for spots on the new board.
In a statement, the agency’s spokesman, John Czwartacki, took a final swipe at the group. “The outspoken members of the Consumer Advisory Board seem more concerned about protecting their taxpayer funded junkets to Washington, D.C., and being wined and dined by the Bureau than protecting consumers,” he said.
Revamping the board is part of the CFPB’s new approach to reaching out to stakeholders to “increase high quality feedback,” the bureau said in an email to the group. The CFPB will hold more town halls and roundtable discussions, the letter said, and the new CAB will have fewer members.
If it wasn't obvious what this means -- it means the bureau is going to appoint representatives from the predatory lending industry and other shady institutions to the board of advisers. They are the "stakeholders." The foxes are going to provide "high quality feedback" on how to protect the hen house.
The 25-member board of advisers included chief executives, such as the head of retail banking at Citi Bank, so it's not as if the board was comprised entirely of tree-hugging liberals.
The new members appointed by Mulvaney later this year probably won't be as concerned about following the law as the previous group of advisers were and you can bet they won't object to Mulvaney's direction very often if they ever do.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is just another agency the next Democratic president will have to rebuild from the ground up now that Trump and his tumorous lackeys have moved in.