Elizabeth Warren may have been silenced for a short time on the Senate floor, but there is one thing she has refused to be silent about: protecting consumers from Wall Street and Big Banks.
In the days following the “Nevertheless, she persisted,” debacle, Warren has been using her extended public platform to raise awareness about a lesser-known government program that has done and will continue to do irreplaceable work in protecting regular Americans from the crimes of big banks and corporations.
The Consumer Finance Protections Bureau (CFPB) was the brainchild of Warren back in 2011. It was conceived in response to the economic crash of 2008 and the particular role banks played in the crash.
Under the CFPB, it would be much more difficult for banks to engage in the widespread and negligent behaviors that led to the housing bubble, and if they did succeed, the CFPB would be there later to prosecute and return damages to injured customers.
Since the bureau was established, it has been instrumental in calling out criminal corporations who take advantage of consumers, levying large fines. It was the CFPB that went after Wells Fargo late in 2016 for their criminal treatment of customers, and that was just one of many cases that the CFPB has been instrumental in.
Despite returning over 12 billion in stolen cash to consumers nationwide, Republicans are eager to gut the bureau and give the power back to their corporate sponsors.
As Republicans aren’t too keen on government oversight, the CFPB is on the chopping block, but Warren is determined to make the work of the CFPB so well known to the American people that they will refuse to allow it to be dismantled.
Speaking in the wake of her new political prominence, Warren explained the vital role the agency plays:
“What Donald Trump wants to do is fire one of the most important financial cops and then say to the American people, you keep walking down this dark alley and, you know, what happens is what happens.”
For too long in America, we have allowed consumers to walk down that dark alley without any protection. If we want to make Americans safer, one of the best ways we can do that is by protecting them from the predatory behaviors of corporations and big banks.
