Arbitrary power at the CFPB

That is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, part of Dodd-Frank.  Here is the Wall Street Journal on the recent court decision to restrict the powers of the Bureau:

The panel’s decision limited the broad discretion granted the five-year-old Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the name of tilting the balance of power from industry to small borrowers, calling it a “gross departure” from the checks and balances normally imposed on regulatory agencies.

…If it stands, the decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia would reduce the agency’s independence, empowering the White House to supervise the agency and remove its director, in contrast to the current arrangement where the director’s five-year term is intended to outlast a president’s.

…In Tuesday’s ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote that Congress gave the CFPB director “more unilateral authority than any other officer in any of the three branches of the U.S. government, other than the president.” He said the problem of checks and balances was particularly acute because the CFPB “possesses enormous power over American business, American consumers and the overall U.S. economy.”

Megan McArdle offers comment.  Here are remarks from Kevin Drum.  I say the regulatory state already has too much arbitrary power, and this is a (small) move in the right direction.

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