New York urgently needs new legislation to “muscle up” its laws that protect consumers. Following the 2008 financial crisis which led to the Great Recession, Congress created the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and gave it broad powers to combat “unfair, deceptive, or abusive” conduct. In the years since, the CFPB has clawed back and returned billions of dollars to customers from financial institutions that cheated them.
These widespread harms to consumers can take various forms. The CFPB’s first enforcement actions returned hundreds of millions of dollars to consumers who opened new credit card accounts and were charged useless “add-on” fees in the process of signing up for them.
Another notorious action exposed Wells Fargo for signing people up to fake bank accounts they had not requested, which padded the numbers for awarding bonuses to employees. In yet another major action, the CFPB joined 49 state attorneys general in ordering Ocwen Financial to repay $2 billion to homeowners for rampant legal violations in servicing their home mortgages. In many other cases, as in Ocwen, the CFPB has teamed up with New York and other states to get meaningful relief for those hurt by illegal and predatory practices…