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Trump's Swamp Things Support Forced Arbitration

Journal by DeathMonkey

Remember how he wasn't going to be beholden to Wall Street's interests?

Treasury Department sides with Wall Street, against federal consumer watchdog agency on arbitration rule

Trump's Swamp Things Support Forced Arbitration | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 12 comments | Search Discussion
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by turgid on Tuesday October 24 2017, @07:19PM (1 child)

    by turgid (4318) on Tuesday October 24 2017, @07:19PM (#587025) Journal

    War is peace.
    Freedom is slavery.
    Mr Putin is a very nice man.
    Erdogan is a patriotic hero.
    Crimea has been liberated.
    Donald Trump will drain the establishment swamp.
    Nigel Farage is a man of the people, anti-establishment, Brexit will be great for Britain, Marine Le Pen will be French President and the EU will collapse imminently.
    The winning lottery numbers this week are not 9, 27, 35, 43, 44 and 49.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday October 25 2017, @08:54AM

      by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @08:54AM (#587312) Homepage Journal

      Thank you so much! I love what President Erdoğan is doing. He's a tremendous bulwark against terrorism. Great guy, very brave. And I love what you Brits are doing with Brexit. You're taking back your country, just like we're taking back ours. We're Making America Great Again. Draining that swamp. And our great nursing homes are a big, big part of that. We believe that arbitration agreements are, in fact, advantageous to both providers and beneficiaries because they allow for the expeditious resolution of claims without the costs and expense of litigation. We're cutting the regulatory costs so our nursing homes can make a fair profit. Cutting unnecessary & excessive costs on providers. #MAGA 🇺🇸

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:41PM (8 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:41PM (#587084) Journal
    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) should be ended. Sure, watchdogs are generally regarded as good. But in this case, we have too many watchdogs. Everything the CFPB does overlaps with other agencies.

    In addition, the CFPB is unconstitutional. It's an independent agency (much like Amtrak or the Federal Reserve) doing a job which should be the exclusive domain of the executive branch (neither Amtrak or the Fed does that). The Constitution delegates powers very explicitly. Congress makes the laws and allots public funds, and the executive branch enforces those laws via regulations and the agencies paid for by Congress. CFPB thus should answer directly to the president, including the ability to fire the current head of the agency for publicly disagreeing with the president, even though it is Trump.

    We see the problem with this approach right here in this story. The Department of the Treasury and the CFPB have conflicting regulation (there's the overlap). How does that get resolved when the two sides don't answer to a common authority? At least in the executive branch, the president can eventually decide the matter, if it comes to that. Here, there will be no resolution until the courts decide.

    This is another one of Obama's nasty political landmines. By creating an independent agency to further this particular agenda, Obama attempted to push this part of his agenda outside of democratic accountability, such as public election and lock in his preferences for the indefinite future. It is a bad idea to create such anti-democratic institutions (Amtrak and the Federal Reserve being good examples of how that can go wrong even with mostly good intentions). But the CFPB in addition would permanent disrupt the balance of power by taking a portion of the executive branch's regulatory authority. It doesn't matter if the CFPB does have occasional good ideas, going about it in this way is illegal.

    At this point, we should ask "How could this go wrong?" If Congress is allowed to section off Constitutionally-delineated pieces of the US government into their own little fiefdoms with weak or non-existent accountability, then where will that end? Perhaps, we'll have a militarily aggressive president and Congress which permanently spins off a portion of the US military and intelligence as a publicly funded "independent agency" because they don't care for their replacements? Nothing could possibly go wrong with that scheme, right?

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:05PM (7 children)

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:05PM (#587102) Journal

      The Constitution delegates powers very explicitly. Congress makes the laws and allots public funds, and the executive branch enforces those laws via regulations and the agencies paid for by Congress.

      Here's the law Congress passed to create the CFPB as an independent agency. [wikipedia.org]

      Here's a bunch of the other US independent agencies. [wikipedia.org]

      This first independent agency was created in 1849 [thoughtco.com] Funny how it's only a problem now...

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:29PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:29PM (#587111) Journal
        Well, I guess we'll just have to come up with a new label that better describes the much greater independence of the CFPB. CIA is on the list, but they answer directly to the cabinet-level post of Director of National Intelligence. Their funding in turn is decided each year by Congress, though presumably some of it is hidden funding in other departments. NASA is on the list, but they report directly to the president and again, funding controlled by Congress directly. In both cases, the President has the power to replace the head of the "independent agency" as well as a great deal of control over the operation of the agency. Now, let's consider [reuters.com] the CFPB:

        The bureau will be an independent unit located inside and funded by the Federal Reserve, the country’s central bank. The financial reform law allows the agency to be formed on an interim basis within the U.S. Treasury.

        The director must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate to a five-year term.

        The bureau will have offices that are in charge of fair lending, financial education, armed services affairs, and financial protection for older Americans, among others.

        So doesn't answer to the president except possibly when the head of the organization is appointed and funding comes from the Fed (which in turn gets their funding [federalreserve.gov] from investments and fee payments from banks) not Congress. In particular, this means that in the long term the CFPB is ripe for takeover by the banks through either regulatory capture or through control of the funding.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:39PM (4 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:39PM (#587114) Journal

        Funny how it's only a problem now...

        Well, it's not completely novel, the National Labor Relations Board has many of the same problems and it's been kicking around since 1935. But look at that Wikipedia list. Most of those "independent agencies" which actually regulate anything report directly to the president. It's just some additional complexity of the Executive Branch.

        • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:45PM (3 children)

          by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:45PM (#587117) Journal

          The ones who Congress intended to report to the President, do so. The ones Congress did not want to report to the President, don't.

          I thought you just said Congress was supposed to pass the laws?

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:54PM (2 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:54PM (#587125) Journal

            I thought you just said Congress was supposed to pass the laws?

            And the President enforces those laws subject to the constraints of the US Constitution. This is a standard matter of US law. For a similar example, it is unconstitutional for Congress to delegate law creation [wikipedia.org] to anyone else, including the Executive branch.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:51PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:51PM (#587491)

              khallow, khallow, khallow! Just stop it, OK?

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 25 2017, @08:09PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 25 2017, @08:09PM (#587529) Journal
                And now the empty trash talking begins. It'd work better if you could hold your end of the conversation. But I guess that would require thinking.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:50PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:50PM (#587123) Journal

        This first independent agency was created in 1849

        No, 1887.

        The first of these, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), was created in 1887 to regulate the railroad (and later the trucking) industries to ensure fair rates and competition and to prevent rate discrimination.

        It's worth noting that within 10 years that agency had overstepped [justia.com] its bounds as determined by the US Supreme Court (page 166 US 494):

        Before the passage of the act, it was generally believed that there were great abuses in railroad management and railroad transportation, and the grave question which Congress had to consider was how those abuses should be corrected, and what control should be taken of the business of such corporations. The present inquiry is limited to the question as to what it determined should be done with reference to the matter of rates. There were three obvious and dissimilar courses open for consideration. Congress might itself prescribe the rates, or it might commit to some subordinate tribunal this duty, or it might leave with the companies the right to fix rates, subject to regulations and restrictions, as well as to that rule which is as old as the existence of common carriers, to-wit, that rates must be reasonable. There is nothing in the act fixing rates. Congress did not attempt to exercise that power, and, if we examine the legislative and public history of the day, it is apparent that there was no serious thought of doing so.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @11:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @11:34PM (#587616)

    Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Revision of Requirements for Long-Term Care Facilities: Arbitration Agreements [archive.org] (comments were taken until August 7)

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