Mick Mulvaney Scared Of His Own Agency's Power

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's acting director is asking Congress to rein in the agencies that he's supposed to be leading. He's in charge. He's saying, "Congress, please rein us in." Mick Mulvaney, the Leader of CFPB, thinks his organization has too much power, and while he's there he wants Congress to take away as much power as possible. Ring of Fire's Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss this.

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Most of Mulvaney's professional career has been financed by the payday loan industry, those predatory payday lenders. They've given a ton of political money to Mulvaney. And so the first thing he did, obviously, when he came into office, before he wrote this report asking for less power, was he dropped a bunch of lawsuits against the payday lending industry for all of their predatory practices, ripping off consumers, creating endless cycles of debt. So Mulvaney last week issues his first report to Congress, and in this first report, which was supposed to be about what his agency is doing, about the only thing he says is, "I have so much power here to actually hold banks accountable that you've got to take it away from me. I don't need this. I don't want it. Let's cripple this agency, and you can help me do it, Congress."

Well, you know there's only a couple ... You can either read it like, "I, Mulvaney, am so stupid, and I'm afraid that you've given me all this power, because I'm a fool, and I'm going to use the power in the wrong kind of way." Or you conclude the obvious, and that is he's joined at the hip with the very industry that he's supposed to be ... he's supposed to be in charge of making sure that this organization does their job and protects consumers. There's been some good results that this organization has gotten, and now all of a sudden he says, "Well, you know, consumers really aren't that important. Yes, I was involved in an industry that ripped them off." The payday lending process was such a scam. As a matter of fact, people went to jail because of it. I'm surprised, frankly, he didn't go to jail because of it.

It's so funny too, because he wants Congress to come in, because this is the group that's supposed to be regulating those big banks, the Wall Street bankers, holding them accountable. And so by bringing Congress in, by saying, "You have to share this power with me, because it's too much for me," it's going to let Congress once again regulate the banks, come up with the rules, come up with the penalties and punishments when they break the law. Not if, it's a when. We know it's when they break the law, and Congress will do nothing. We'll end up in the same tailspin we were in 2007-2008, and the cycle will continue to repeat itself, because-

What he's really doing, he's creating a record. That's what he really wants to do. He wants to be on the record as saying, "I'm the insider. I'm the guy that's supposed to know most about it. And yeah, I'm either too stupid ... you've given me too much power and I'm way too stupid for that power ... or you know what, consumers really don't matter." They did a couple great things last year, if you remember, before Mulvaney took control. This agency has potential to really get some things done, don't they?

It absolutely does, and those lawsuits against payday lenders were going to be huge. You could have shut down the industry, or at least fixed it, and Mulvaney steps in, says, "Nope, not good enough for me. Take away my power, because I'm too stupid to know what to do."

Yeah, "I really am a dummy." A Michigan agency has approved Nestlé's plan to boost the amount of water it takes from the state, even though more than 80,000 residents had asked for the state to refuse Nestlé's request. And so, again, it comes down to an agency that's packed with political hacks. We know the ending to this before it even starts. I want you to think about something. When we saw all of the Koch brother activity ... remember the Kochs? They were getting involved in school board races and county commissioner races, and everybody's scratching their head, saying, "My God, you're spending billions of dollars on these dogcatcher kind of races. What's up?"