It appears as though Mick Mulvaney, the acting director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, is a big believer in the Ferber method.
For those of you who don’t know what the Ferber method is, you must not be parents. The Ferber method is a means of teaching young children to sleep through the night by not checking in on them when they are crying. The thought process is that if a parent checks on a child every time the child cries, the child will use crying as a means of getting attention from his or her parents.
Mulvaney went on CNBC yesterday to talk about the growth in the amount of student loan debt in the United States, and expressed concern that students don’t fully understand the financial obligation that is associated with taking out a student loan.
“If we teach an entire generation of people that the first major loan they take out, they don’t have to pay back, I’m worried about the long-term impact of that,” Mulvaney said during his appearance, where he also said he thought there was a “disconnect” and that students “don’t pay as much attention” as they should to repaying their student loans.
“That worries me from a financial standpoint and a moral standpoint.”
Mulvaney was also asked about the recent departure of Seth Frotman, who was the BCFP’s top student loan ombudsman before resigning in a blaze of glory last month. Saying he had never heard any complaints from Frotman while he was working at the bureau, Mulvaney went on to say, “I think he was more interested in getting his name in the paper.”