House Republicans and their New Dem/Blue Dog allies have made crippling and chipping away at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) their top priority and they are always looking for opportunities to hamper the agencies operations. Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee, along with right-wing Democrats on the committee who work for Wall Street-- like Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL), Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), John Delaney (New Dem-MD), Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY), David Scott (New Dem-GA) and Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)-- have been busy little bees working to chip away at Dodd-Frank protections, especially those that are part of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Almost a year ago Elizabeth Warren said she wasn't surprised "that the big banks and Republicans are attacking me or the CFPB. After all, in just four years, the brand-new consumer agency has already forced the biggest financial companies to return more than $11 billion directly to the people they cheated. And even on Wall Street, $11 billion is real money. But I am surprised by just how bold and shameless these new attacks are." Here's a misleading Orwellian TV ad the banksters financed to attack the CFPB at the time:This week, exactly what the Republicans and New Dems were trying to prevent happened-- and spectacularly so. The CFPB forced a major campaign donor for corrupt members of Congress, Wells Fargo, to pay a $185 million fine for stealing from its customers. The bank was caught systematically using "illegal sales practices that included the opening of unauthorized duplicate accounts and credit cards by employees in order to meet sales quotas" without informing the customers.
"Wells Fargo employees secretly opened unauthorized accounts to hit sales targets and receive bonuses," said CFPB director Richard Cordray. "Because of the severity of these violations, Wells Fargo is paying the largest penalty the CFPB has ever imposed."In a statement, Wells Fargo said it "reached these agreements consistent with our commitment to customers and in the interest of putting this matter behind us."...Cordray said: "Today’s action should serve notice to the entire industry that financial incentive programs, if not monitored carefully, carry serious risks that can have serious legal consequences."
The Wells Fargo executives who were behind the scandal, face exactly zero sanctions whatsoever. The big, scary fine comes from the company's shareholders, not the crooked executives, and the 5,300 employees being fired are all low-level working stiffs who, in opening a million and a half unauthorized accounts and issuing 600,000 unauthorized credit cards, were being terrorized by the higher-ups and thought they were following orders from their bosses who dangled bonuses under their noses and threatened them with unemployment if they didn't follow the implied orders in a pressure-cooker culture that was first exposed in 2013.The CFPB order doesn't include any provisions for Wells Fargo to admit any wrong-doing. Yes, there was a public apology, but no sanctions on the guilty and no admission that the company did anything wrong. This shouldn't be over. The Department of Justice and the SEC should open investigations and prosecute the real culprits so that it isn't just low-level tellers who are made the scapegoats. And if the banksters want to maintain the fiction that they didn't know, then, clearly the bank is too big to manager and has to be broken up into more manageable pieces. That could never happen under an Obama presidency, of course; that's not what they do. What about under President Hillary?So far this cycle, Wells Fargo's PAC has contributed $847,200 to federal candidates, 66% to Republicans and 34% to Democrats. They particularly target their bribes towards members of Congress well-placed to help them create a regulatory environment that allows them to cheat their customers with impunity, the way Wells Fargo was caught doing.Sean Duffy always bragged how he'd take an ax to agencies that protect consumersWells Fargo's biggest 2016 bribe was paid to Sean Duffy (R-WI), the extraordinarily crooked chairman of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, who is the only member of either house of Congress to get over $10,000. Notorious Wall Street puppets like Speaker Paul Ryan, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, Budget Committee chairman Tom Price, Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, Senate Agriculture Committee's Chair of the Subcommittee on Commodities, Risk Management and Trade John Boozman and House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer each "only" got $10,000 pops this cycle but Duffy, whose subcommittee has done more to enable Wells Fargo's criminal behavior than any other congressional grouping took a nice fat $15,000 legalistic bribe from the very people he's in charge of exercising oversight over!This year's dozen Members of the House Financial Services Committee who took the biggest bribes from Wells Fargo to make it easier for the banksters to get away with ripping off its customers:
• Sean Duffy (R-WI)- $15,000• Ed Royce (R-CA)- $10,000• Frank Lucas (R-OK)- $10,000• Dennis Ross (R-FL)- $9,000• Robert Pittenger (R-NC)- $7,500• Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)- $7,500• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- $7,500• Jeb Hensarling, chairman (R-TX)- $7,500• Tom Emmer (R-MN)- $7,500• Mick Mulvaney (R-SC)- $7,500• Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $7,500• French Hill (R-AR)- $7,500
Duffy has the misfortune of having an effective and determined opponent this cycle, Mary Hoeft, who beat her primary opponent last month with over 80% of the vote. When she read about the Wells Fargo settlement Thursday, she issued this brief statement: "Sean Duffy, chair of a congressional banking oversight subcommittee, accepted more than $400,000 in political contributions from bankers to use against me in this campaign. At the very least, Sean should have acknowledged the ethical dilemma he faced when accepting money from the bankers he oversees. That doesn't appear to be the case. He is doubling down on his efforts to cripple the Consumer's Financial Protection Bureau, the very agency designed by Elizabeth Warren and others to make sure Big Banks are never able to bring our economy to its knees again--an economy where 7 million Americans lost their homes to bankruptcy." Blue America has endorsed Mary Hoeft and you can help her replace the ethically unfit Duffy by tapping on the thermometer below: