Speaking to a group of state attorneys general earlier this week, Mick Mulvaney, the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, again laid out his more relaxed enforcement plan for the agency, and added that he will be relying on AGs to pick up the slack when it comes to regulating financial services organizations, including debt collectors.
Mulvaney went as far to say that he would look to whether a state AG is planning an enforcement action against a company before deciding whether the CFPB should do anything.
If a state AG is not planning on bring an action we are looking at, Mulvaney said he is going to want to know why, during his remarks to the National Association of Attorneys General.
Mulvaney also took the opportunity to remind his audience that he “is not the devil,” and again took a swing at his predecessor, former director Richard Cordray, who is now running for governor of Ohio.
“I found yesterday I am paying people at the CFPB to do economic research on climate change,” he said.
The CFPB is also planning to increase its efforts in the way of consumer education because, “in a perfect world if you did education right, you wouldn’t have to do any enforcement at all,” he said.