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Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform Failure

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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, more commonly referred to as the CFPB, can trace its origins to the 2008 financial meltdown. Authority for the creation of the CFPB stems from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was named for the bill's sponsors, Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank. The Dodd-Frank was aimed primarily at regulating banks, the stock exchange, mortgage lenders and similar high-value financial markets. However, the CFPB was also given the power to combat "abusive, unfair or deceptive" practices that impacted average consumers. It is this power that the CFPB has invoked in its war against cash advance loans and other small-dollar, high-risk, short-term loans. The war began almost as soon …show more content…

The OCC regulations required that lenders ensure the borrower's ability to repay, limited loans to one per month per borrower, required a minimum of one month between loans and required lenders to review the borrower's financial situation every six months to see if it had improved. As William M. Isaac, who previously chaired the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, reported in his article appearing in American Banker, within days of the OCC's rules, every major bank offering advance deposit loans pulled them from the market. Many of the OCC's rules that bankers found too burdensome to allow them to continue making advance deposit loans also appear in the CFPB's regulations for cash advance loans and are even more stringent. The fact that banks could not deal with all of the restrictions placed on them by the OCC suggests that private lenders will not be able to deal with the restrictions placed on them by the CFPB. Many storefronts will likely close, and since the new regulations cover all types of lenders, cash advance online loans will likely disappear or become much more difficult to …show more content…

The CFPB has stated that many cash advance loans are not taken out to cover true emergencies but normal expenses such as food, utility bills or rent. Furthermore, the CFPB cites studies that indicate that borrowers report that if cash advance loans were unavailable, they would have to reduce their spending. Given that these borrowers have nowhere else to turn, which category of spending would the CFPB have them eliminate — food, rent or utilities? The CFPB's "Hobson's choice" approach to cash advance loans will create more problems than it will

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