Musk's Doge takes aim at US consumer protection agency
Source: BBC
The Trump administration and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) have moved to take control of - and possibly shut down - an agency set up to protect consumers in the wake of the 2007-8 financial crisis.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) oversees banks and holds vast troves of consumer data.
As part of the US Federal Reserve, the CFPB is an independent agency, however Trump's budget director was installed as its director on Friday, and Doge officials have gained access to the agency's computer systems. . .
CBS, the BBC's US news partner, reported that DOGE representatives have gained access to the internal systems of CFPB, including personnel rolls and financial records.
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly48101n19o
There is no end to their malice.

Autumn
(47,714 posts)down the (CFPB) an agency set up to protect consumers in the wake of the 2007-8 financial crisis..
Bluetus
(955 posts)What is he up to? Well, he obviously is all in favor of anything fascist or racist. And he spent the money to put Trump in office because he expects a direct payoff in NASA and DoD contracts for SpaceX. He also wants to get rid of any investigations of unsafe vehicles by Tesla, and hopes to clear any obstacles to putting driverless cars on the streets, whether they technology is ready or not. Those things are all obvious.
What is not so obvious is, why is his kiddie corps of mini-techbros running into all the agencies, trying to copy as much data as possible before courts shut them down? The answer to this most likely lies in AI. Musk has various AI ventures. And the AI techbros just took a huge pie in the face last week with China revealing that their multi-billion dollar AI undertakings can actually be matched at 1/10 the cost, as demonstrated by the DeepSeek project. Musk has been vacuuming up investor money because he claims to be the master of all things AI, and now these investors are wondering if they just wasted a whole lot of money. Beyond that, all the charlatans running around pumping AI and grabbing investor dollars are in full panic mode because it could quickly become very difficult to land any more investor money until everybody understands just how DeepSeek seemed to beat everybody else at 1/10 the cost.
AI runs on data, massive amounts of data. So my theory is that Musk and his snot-nosed young-uns are grabbing all the government data they can as fast as that can because they believe they can somehow put this into an AI model that will give them a unique product to monetize. Hell, Musk will probably try to sell this "Government language model" back to the Federal government for billions of dollars.
And of course, they can also do more basic criming, selling classified data to foreign governments. But start with AI because that's where Musk's brain is.
SunSeeker
(55,471 posts)That is pretty fucking good return on investment for taxpayers.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/07/elon-musk-team-cfpb-00203119#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20Consumer%20Financial%20Protection%20Bureau,American%20consumers%20over%20%2420%20billion.
In 2024, the CFPB had finalized rules that would limit overdraft charges and credit card late fees to $8, saving U.S. consumers about $15 billion a year.
https://www.consumerreports.org/consumer-protection/how-cfpb-changes-could-impact-consumers-a2527371632/#:~:text=Limiting%20Credit%20Card%20Late%20Fees%20and%20Overdraft%20Fees,about%20%2415%20billion%20a%20year. But the banks are litigating that rule, and you can bet the Trump administration will not enforce it regardless.
iemanja
(55,848 posts)It cuts into profits for the banks and credit card companies, who matter more than American citizens.
If it was truly being wasteful, as in doing nothing with that $800M a year, it would not he in Elon's crosshairs.
Response to SunSeeker (Reply #3)
SunSeeker This message was self-deleted by its author.