The mainstream media is slowly starting to catch on that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau appears to have taken a vow of enforcement inaction following the appointment of Mick Mulvaney as acting director.
After averaging between two and four enforcement actions per month under former director Richard Cordray, who left the agency in late November to run for governor of Ohio, the CFPB has taken no enforcement actions in the four-plus months that Mulvaney has been at the helm of the agency, noted a published report.
Mulvaney may have to answer questions about that when he testifies before the House Financial Services Committee tomorrow and the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday. It is expected that both hearings will be the polar opposite of what occurred during the Cordray years, where Republicans blasted the director and Democrats spent their question time applauding the agency and its efforts.
The former enforcement chief at the CFPB said that she thinks enforcement actions are still moving at the agency, just not as quickly as they did under Cordray.
“My sense is things are moving forward in some way, but much more slowly than what was the historic pace of enforcement work,” Joanna Pearl, legal director at the recently created Public Rights Project, who was chief of staff of the CFPB’s Office of Enforcement until January, told the Associated Press.
While Mulvaney has made it clear that the CFPB would no longer “push the envelope” when it came to regulating the financial services industry, it is hard to believe that anyone expected an outright stoppage in enforcement actions.