Year one of the Trump administration: Normalizing itself by working for the top 1 percent
"Protecting Wall Street is a common theme in the first year of the Trump presidency. Besides his Fed picks, Trump has also installed Mick Mulvaney as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Mulvaney is a long-time enemy of the CFPB, and has already rolled back regulations protecting borrowers from the worst abuses of payday lenders. As a congressman from South Carolina, Mulvaney ranked ninth among all his peers in how much money he raised from the payday lending industry. Their investment has paid off well. Besides the regulatory rollbacks, Mulvaney also released a memo to CFPB staff informing them that the Bureau exists to “serve” these and other financial institutions. The attack on regulations that bolster the economic security of working Americans is another common theme in the first year of the Trump presidency. His administration has, for example, delayed key provisions of the fiduciary rule and signaled its intention to weaken it further. While “fiduciary rule” sounds wonkish, it’s not. It’s a rule that simply states that financial advisors are not allowed to cheat their clients by doing things like steering their money into vehicles that provide low rates of return to the clients but high fees to the advisors. It is the rock-bottom lowest standard that one could imagine for an industry that exists to help working Americans manage their financial decisions. Conflicted advice that steered money to financial vehicles that generated high fees for advisors rather than high returns for savers costs Americans about $17 billion each year. This is $17 billion transferred directly from working Americans to Wall Street firms. The fiduciary rule was designed to stop this transfer, but the Trump administration is working hard to make sure it continues. Aside from the fiduciary rule, the Trump administration has also made clear its intention to undermine the improved threshold defining who is automatically entitled to overtime pay."
