Free Republic

Diversity Police: Republicans are scratching their heads over the Obama regime's privacy-invading "National Mortgage Database Project." What's it for? That's easy: redistribution of wealth. In an unprecedented federal intrusion, the president's most radical financial regulators — Mel Watt of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Richard Cordray of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — are creating a massive discrimination database on as many as 230 million Americans. It will encompass a mortgage holder's entire credit history — including credit scores and account balances — and all credit lines, from credit cards to student and car loans. "Why are we collecting...

As many as 227 million Americans may be compelled to disclose intimate details of their families and financial lives -- including their Social Security numbers -- in a new national database being assembled by two federal agencies. The Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau posted an April 16 Federal Register notice of an expansion of their joint National Mortgage Database Program to include personally identifiable information that reveals actual users, a reversal of previously stated policy. Sign Up for the Watchdog newsletter! FHFA will manage the database and share it with CFPB. A CFPB internal planning...

Oversight: Congress and some others in the media finally see the urgency in reining in Obama's rogue, out-of-control, unaccountable and secretive Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is something we have urged since its inception. In 2010, the Dodd-Frank Act gave birth to what we have argued is the single most powerful and least accountable agency in Washington. CFPB has the power to police virtually every financial transaction in the economy. Yet it holds its meetings in secret, has no inspector general and is funded outside the normal congressional budget process. On Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee will take up...

Power Struggle: CFPB Director Richard Cordray has snubbed yet another congressional request to disclose information about the shady methods he's using to investigate auto lenders for discrimination. Early last month, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling formally asked Cordray to explain how it is he can sue Ally Bank and other car lenders for policies that allegedly have a "disparate impact" on minorities when the industry doesn't even ID borrowers by race and investigators would have to guess their minority status. Then Hensarling pressed him for the metric he's using to determine a "statistically significant disparity" in loan pricing...

The liberal dictatorship of Richard Cordray at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) came under fire this week when the head of the House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) called for the agency to open up its four advisory council meetings to the public and press. “Instead of operating behind closed doors, it’s time for the CFPB to live up to its oft-stated commitment to transparency and openness ... Wielding the power of the Dodd-Frank law, the CFPB has become an instrument for liberal tyranny focused against banks, mortgage companies, realtors, and other consumer credit professionals. The agency has been holding...

Some experts are concerned that the Obama Administration is poised to begin forcing Americans to stock their retirement accounts with low-return government bonds. Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Board, told Bloomberg News that his new regulatory agency was mulling a move to control the $20 trillion that Americans have invested for retirement. He specifically mentioned 401(k) plans and IRAs. “That’s one of the things we’ve been exploring,” Cordray told Bloomberg reporter Carter Dougherty in January. Cordray’s seemingly stray comment was largely ignored by mainstream and financial media, but won the attention of fund managers and economists. SNIP...

At a Senate Banking Committee hearing last week, Richard Cordray - the director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection - was on the defensive with respect to the bureau's collection of information about Americans' spending habits. His unpersuasive defense of the CFPB's data collection practices was not surprising in light of the agency's flawed design. First, Mr. Cordray explained that the industry and other regulators also collect credit card information. It is difficult to understand how he reached that conclusion since he did not seem certain about the scope of the bureau's data collection efforts. Mr. Cordray did not...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Obama’s Secret Collaboration with ACORN BossesPosted By Matthew Vadum On October 17, 2013 @ 12:50 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 1 Comment Former officers of the disgraced radical group ACORN are still advising the Obama administration and guiding its catastrophic far-left policies almost three years after the group filed bankruptcy.Former ACORN Housing public affairs director Bruce Dorpalen, who now runs the National Housing Resource Center (NHRC), has been meeting with and advising senior Obama administration officials on housing policy, according to good-government group Judicial Watch. The watchdog discovered the secret collaborations after filing a...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is looking to create a "Google Earth" of every financial transaction of every American, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) warned today in a Senate speech opposing confirmation of Richard Cordray as CFPB director. "This bill (creating the CFPB) was supposed to be about regulating Wall Street. Instead, it's creating a Google Earth on every financial transaction.

Sen. John McCain spent the weekend negotiating with Majority Leader Harry Reid on a deal to avert Reid's threatened use of the "nuclear option" to change Senate rules to eliminate filibusters on Presidential nominations. Through his efforts, McCain was able to secure a complete GOP capitulation on 7 pending nominations. Reid secured all the benefits of exercising the "nuclear option" without the political cost of actually using it. Under the McCain deal, the GOP will provide enough votes to secure the 60 votes needed for cloture and proceed to final consideration of the 7 nominees. In exchange, Reid agreed to...

Bowing to an ultimatum, Senate Republicans agreed Tuesday to drop objections to key Obama administration nominees, delivering a victory to Senate Democrats who said they will shelve — for now — their own plans to change the rules and curtail filibusters. The last-minute deal, announced just before the Senate was slated to hold a critical test vote, still leaves Democrats able to employ the so-called “nuclear option” and change the filibuster rules later this year if they think Republicans are obstructing appointments unfairly. Republicans said they got President Obama to withdraw two controversial nominees to the National Labor Relations Board,...

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed a director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, ending a nearly two-year standoff in Congress and putting the new agency on sounder legal footing. Democrats overcame long-held Republican objections to approve Richard Cordray's nomination to head the bureau, which was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law. Bureau advocates and consumer law experts said Senate confirmation clears up a number of questions, including Cordray's legal status as the temporary bureau director and the agency's authority to oversee certain financial sectors such as debt collection.

According to RealtyTrac, Akron Ohio is the leader in housing units per foreclosure filings. And Columbus Ohio is 6th on the list. The FC in Ohio? Rounding out the top 20 foreclosure metro areas are Toledo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Canton. You know, pretty much the entire state. Huh. I would have thought that Richard Cordray, the current Robo-cop at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and former attorney general of Ohio, would have cleaned up the foreclosure mess before heading up the CFPB. Here is a chart of underwater mortgages in Ohio. Ohio is at 32.48% underwater. The striking thing...

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is fighting to protect her “brainchild”, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). She also wants to support the nominated of Richard Cordray, the former Attorney General of Ohio, better known as “Robocop” for his attacks on banks and servicers over robosigning. True, robosigning foreclosures is sloppy, but there were apparently no economic harm to borrowers (that is, 100% of borrowers defaulted on their loans and the banks/servicers were trying to claim the house to mitigate losses). Yet the Attorneys’ General settlement went ahead despite no economic harm to borrowers. The settlement provides as much as $25...

Senate Republicans are renewing their vow to block any nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) unless major changes are made to its structure. In a letter sent to President Obama on Friday, 43 Republican senators committed to refusing approval of any nominee to head the consumer watchdog until the bureau underwent significant reform. Lawmakers signing on to the letter included Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee. "The CFPB as created by the deeply flawed Dodd-Frank Act is one of the least accountable in Washington,"...

President Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on a labor relations panel, a federal appeals court panel ruled Friday. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that Obama did not have the power to make three recess appointments last year to the National Labor Relations Board. The unanimous decision is an embarrassing setback for the president, who made the appointments after Senate Republicans spent months blocking his choices for an agency they contended was biased in favor of unions. The ruling also throws into question Obama's recess...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), built by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and run by “Robo Cop” Richard Cordray (the former Attorney General of Ohio), has issued its new list of mortgage feature bans for the “qualified mortgage.” Kerri Ann Panchuk from Housing Wire has a nice summary in her article. 201301_cfpb_ability-to-repay-factsheet Here are the features of Qualified Mortgages and what is banned: • No excess upfront points and fees • No toxic loan features o No interest-only loans, o No loans where the principal amount increases, such as a negative-amortization loan; and o No loans where the term is...

The companies that determine Americans' credit scores are about to come under government oversight for the first time. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Monday that it will start supervising the 30 largest firms that make up 94 percent of the industry. That includes the three big credit reporting firms: Equifax Inc., Experian and TransUnion. In remarks prepared for a speech Monday, Richard Cordray, the government agency's director, said that scorekeeping by credit bureaus plays such a large role in Americans' financial lives, it requires scrutiny.

Complete title: Consumer Protection Financial Bureau Director Richard Cordray Doubted Constitutionality of His Own Appointment, Documents Uncovered by Judicial Watch Show “There is a chance…that the appointment would be invalidated by a court.” Cordray Told Staff His Short Stint “should give to each one of us…a fierce urgency to accomplish the work we are doing together.” (Washington, DC) –Judicial Watch, the organization that investigates and fights government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that indicate the agency’s director, Richard Cordray, doubted the constitutionality of his own appointment. On January 4, 2012,...

(CNSNews.com) - Richard Cordray did not face a threatened boycott by Republican senators during his appearance Tuesday before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, but Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) told Cordray that President Obama had unconstitutionally appointed him as director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Johanns said he did not intend to “revisit” and “stir up” the controversy surrounding Cordray’s possibly unconstitutional recess appointment, “because I think that’s going to happen. I think there’s going to be litigation that will make that happen.” But Johanns politely but firmly told Cordray he did not accept the validity of...