Court: Funding System For Liz Warren’s Consumer Financial 'Protection' Bureau Is Unconstitutional, But…

P. Gardner Goldsmith | July 20, 2022
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A recent Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling sheds light on how a media-lauded arm of Leviathan continues to swing its suckers, despite a separate 2020 Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) finding that this bureau’s Director was too insulated from removal and represented an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers doctrine.

The recent court decision claims the insulation of the CFPB from executive or legislative oversight, constraint, or control, was a violation of the Founders’ intent.

Not a big surprise when you look at its history.

The “bureau” is the 2009-2010 Sen. Liz Warren (D-MA)  "Frankenstein" called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that was part of the similarly monstrous “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” – both of which were concocted supposedly in response to the economic collapse of 2008-2011.

Of course, Warren, Dodd, Frank, and their allies didn’t expose the real culprits at the heart of the problem. They remained mum about the institution of the federal government and its seemingly infinite array of cronies. They diverted attention from inflationary Federal Reserve policies and federal spending. They didn’t expose years of federal pressure to make banks lend to people who could not afford mortgages. They didn’t shut down the federally created Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac that had acted (and still act) as artificial consumers of “mortgage-backed securities,” and they didn’t cite the federally-insured, federally-pushed variable rate mortgages that presented moral hazards, inspired malinvestments, and led to the housing crash, and economic depression that lasted into 2011.

By the way, that was, as the pop media called it, an “economic downturn” that hardly any of them or of their circus of Obama-friendly economists would ADMIT was a depression.

And out of that “Problem-Reaction-Solution” gambit, we got Warren’s CPFB, which often is described in a manner similar to this charming piece of prose, from left-leaning, “The Balance”:

“The CFPB, which was formed in 2010, is a consolidation of various consumer protection agencies and is vested with a high level of authority and independence.”

Which, like most big-government drivel, utilizes the term “consumer protection” without noting that the agencies are part of a government-run protection racket that extracts our money and doesn’t comply with the US Constitution or our personal satisfaction. Likewise, the Balance misuses “independence” in a fashion similar to the way government shills lie about America being a home of “self-government” when, in reality, we toil for and fear the government as it expands and sucks up more of our lives.

The CFPB is a purely political entity, created for political purposes, serving political purposes. Its so-called “protection” is a sham, and its half-a-BILLION-per-year budget comes at our expense, whether we want it or not.

What are some other details about the CFPB?

Investopedia observes:

“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), established under Dodd-Frank, was given the job of preventing predatory mortgage lending (reflecting the widespread sentiment that the subprime mortgage market was the underlying cause of the 2007–2008 catastrophe) and make it easier for consumers to understand the terms of a mortgage before agreeing to them. It deters mortgage brokers from earning higher commissions for closing loans with higher fees and/or higher interest rates and requires that mortgage originators not steer potential borrowers to the loan that will result in the highest payment for the originator.”

Again, we see loaded terms, left undefined – terms such as “predatory lending” which overlooks the fact that customers have to ASK for mortgages, and loans aren’t IMPOSED on people the way government imposes its debt on us. Likewise, it overlooks the fact that the feds pushed banks to give those loans to people, even as the same federal government insured banks through the FDIC (creating a moral hazard that inspired reckless lending) and the federally-created Fannie and Freddie bought those poisoned “mortgage-backed securities.”

The idea that a government-created entity has any place “deterring” mortgage brokers from earning higher commissions for any reason in voluntary deals is anathema to any sense of liberty and peace. Is the CFPB going to step in if a mortgage CONSUMER gets a better deal than what the bureaucrats approve? Why doesn’t it work both ways?

The reason is that the bureaucrats are part of a system that creates more opportunities for regulatory capture, influence peddling, and “revolving-door” employment, wherein the giant banks and financial institutions it “regulates” now have a strong incentive to feed politicians who appoint the bureaucrats, so as to to not be harassed or to focus government threats on competitors, and big-wigs at banks/mortgage giants can move in and out of government with ease. As Dr Mary Ruwart has shown in great detail in her book, “Death by Regulation,” and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has shown in his book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” this is precisely how the FDA’s pharma-drug “protection racket” works.

Perhaps that’s the process by which former FDA commissioner Scott Gottleib became the Director of Pfizer in 2019, and by which former CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger joined financial-tech (”fintech”) cryptocurrency security corporation Solidus Labs – as the CFPB plots getting its fingers into “nonbank” financial companies, specifically, those that handle tech-based cryptocurrencies.

As Jeffrey Alberts and Dustin N. Nofziger note for The New York Law Review:

“…the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced this April that it intends to begin using a ‘dormant’ authority to conduct regulatory examinations of nonbank financial companies when they pose risks to consumers.”

Which reminds readers that virtually any business could, theoretically, fall under CFPB target-hairs, as long as the staff at CFPB claim that targeting such a business is a means of “protecting consumers,” and it indicates that the same CFPB gang seem to believe that, contrary to the US Constitution, they can do virtually anything.

Here’s where things stand, and why it could be wise to watch the courts and see what happens.

The SCOTUS ruled in 2020 that it was unconstitutional to limit a President's (as head of the Executive Branch) ability to remove a Director of the CFPB only “for cause” and not “at will” or at his own discretion. Said Chief Justice Roberts at the time:

"The agency may therefore continue to operate, but its director, in light of our decision, must be removable by the president at will.”

So, of course, rather than address the toweringly unconstitutional nature of the entire bureau, Roberts and the majority just targeted the manner in which a Prez can fire the head of said bureau.

But there’s a new wrinkle on the ugly face of the Warren beast, and it came May 2, when Reagan-appointed Fifth Circuit Court Judge Edith H. Jones wrote an opinion in the case of “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. All American Check Cashing, Inc.” which had been appealed by the Mississippi-based company after a federal district court ruled in favor of a CFPB attack on them.

Related: Chief Ranting Shrew Mad: Liz Warren's Unhinged Tirade At SCOTUS Was a Thing to Behold | MRCTV

Here's what The New American’s Bob Adelmen offers:

“All American claimed that the CFPB is unconstitutional because it has no accountability. It claimed that it is, in effect, a rogue agency, violating the separation of powers doctrine intrinsic to the Constitution.”

After losing in a federal district court, All American appealed to the Fifth Circuit, where, first, it was heard by a panel, then, en banc. And Judge Jones wrote an opinion emphasizing the fact that the CFPB gets its funds through a circumvention of the typical DC process.

Writes Adelman:

“Congress placed the CFPB outside of executive control, making it a part of the Federal Reserve and allowing the CFPB to access funds directly from the Fed whenever it ‘reasonably’ needed them. The bureau with its 1,600 employees lives inside the Federal Reserve’s offices in Washington, D.C.

Jones said the insulation of the CFPB from executive or legislative oversight, constraint, or control, was a violation of the Founders’ intent.”

So, not only has the SCOTUS ruled against the firing process to oust the CFPB Director, now, the CFPB, which supposedly guards against corrupt "financing" schemes, has been cited for an unconstitutional funding process.

That doesn’t go far enough towards recognizing the fact that the entire bureau is based on an improper reading of the Interstate Commerce Clause, but it does mean that if the CFPB appeals, the case will go to the SCOTUS. And that, writes Adelman, has larger implications, because, when sitting on a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 2016, current Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared to acknowledge the unconstitutional nature of the CFPB, and, of course, the others in the majority could lean towards originalism.

Watch for news of an appeal by Warren’s darling, the CFPB, and think about how incredibly counter the bureau is to any concept of freedom the Founders understood.

We’ll keep you in the loop.

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