R.I.P. CFPB?

The Journal.

The Wall Street Journal

Daily News, Business News, News

4.2 • 5.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

The Trump administration's newly installed acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chief Russell Vought is closing the agency and has ordered staff to halt all work. WSJ’s Brian Schwartz explores what the agency does and why it’s become the next target for Trump allies like Vought and Elon Musk. Further Listening: - Trump 2.0: Less Foreign Aid, More Tariffs - Inside USAID as Elon Musk and DOGE Ripped It Apart - Trump’s Tariff Whiplash Further Reading: - CFPB to Close Office After Vought Tells Staff to Halt All Supervision - Russell Vought Taking Over as New Acting Head of CFPB Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Over the weekend, the Trump administration continued taking a buzzsaw to the federal government.
0:10.8	After largely dismantling USAID, a $40 billion agency focused on delivering foreign aid,
0:17.5	President Trump's sites are now set on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB.
0:24.7	It's an agency that was created in the wake at the 2008 financial crisis.
0:30.1	The CFPB, it's supposed to be this kind of oversight agency over financial institutions across the country, Bank of America,
0:39.7	J.P. Morgan, and you name it. And what they're supposed to be doing is really being a consumer
0:45.6	advocacy agency. They're supposed to be monitoring and supervising the financial firms for
0:50.7	any sort of scams or anything of the like. That's our colleague Brian Schwartz.
0:56.0	He says Republicans have been railing against the agency for years.
1:00.0	So this is clearly a big target, not just for the Trump administration, but for the banking industry at large.
1:08.0	And over the past few days, the agency ground to a halt.
1:12.7	The Trump administration has ordered the Commercial Financial Protection Bureau to stop
1:17.1	working effective immediately. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is closing his headquarters
1:22.3	this week. Employees received an email from President Donald Trump's budget chief to stop all work.
1:29.0	There is no word of how long this is going to last outside of this idea that the offices
1:33.3	are only supposed to be closed for this week, but I'm highly skeptical of that.
1:36.8	They say that it's switched for this week.
1:38.4	Okay, great, what happens on Friday? We don't know.
1:43.9	Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.
1:48.5	I'm Ryan Knutzen.
1:49.9	It's Tuesday, February 11th.
1:57.1	Coming up on the show, is this the end of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?
	...

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