Is humility the quality you're looking for and watchdogs on guard for consumer exploitation?

I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says it's going to start requiring its bank examiners to recite a humility pledge to financial institutions before starting a review. It's not clear how much of an

effect this will have, Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzor reports. In a statement, the CFPB describes

its own supervision division as a weaponized arm. The pledge says the CFPB will focus banking exams

on pressing threats to consumers, especially service members and veterans.

The pledge also promises the CFPB will avoid duplicating things already being done by states and other regulators

and says financial institutions will get advanced notice of exams. In their own statement, CFPB union members say they already give advanced notice,

and they point out that CFPB examiners have forced banks to return money to consumers and help

discover scams, like the fake bank accounts Wells Fargo employees opened in customers' names.

The union also says Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vote has stopped

all CFPB bank exams this year and says he's going to shut down the agency by next year.

I'm Nancy Marshall Genser for Marketplace.

The official measure of that engine of economic activity, retail sales, is out this morning.

Finally, it was, as they say, on eBay, vintage, Lauren Seidel Bakers with the New Hampshire-based consultancy ITR economics. Thanks for

joining us. Thank you. Great to be here. All right. So from prehistory, when dinosaurs ruled the

earth and the power of fire had not yet been

harnessed, we get today's long-delayed retail sales report from the U.S. government.

It is, did you see, September's number? I mean, is that worth anything to you?

I won't say it's worth nothing. I'm an economist, so I cling to my data by my fingernails.

Really what this tells us is that the bottom didn't fall out from under the economy.

At this point, some of the numbers maybe didn't quite reach consensus, but these are still

decent. This shows that the consumer is still out there spending. Unfortunately, there's a little

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