In the wake of the financial crisis, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was established to stop predatory financial activity central to the collapse. For years, the CFPB has stood up to financial predators, holding companies acting in bad faith accountable for wrongdoing and returning $12 billion of ill-gotten profits to consumers. When the CFPB saw predatory payday and auto title lenders targeting the poorest Americans with high-interest debt traps, it studied the issue for five years and proposed a new consumer protection rule to end the predation. Today, the Trump administration is attempting to abandon those efforts and to allow payday lenders to continue to profit off of debt and misery while charging outrageously high interest rates.
