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Mick Mulvaney is actively encouraging bankers to bribe lawmakers to get what they want.
BY BESS LEVIN
APRIL 25, 2018 11:58 AM
"There was some surprise, last week, when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced a $1 billion fine against Wells Fargo for mortgage- and loan-related abuses. Acting C.F.P.B. Director Mick Mulvaney, after all, has all but gutted the agency in his five short months there, freezing all new investigations into financial companies and effectively refusing to punish any malefactors in its sights. Had Mulvaney, who previously sponsored legislation to get rid of the bureau and called it a “sick, sad joke,” had a change of heart? On Tuesday, clearly sensing those questions were in the air, Mulvaney set the record straight: he still fully believes the C.F.P.B. does way too much for consumers, and to prove it, he told a room full of bankers exactly how to bend his sad shell of an agency to their will.
“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mulvaney said at an American Bankers Association conference, where 1,300 bankers and lending-industry officials had gathered to hear him speak. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.” A spokesperson would later half-heartedly claim that this was taken out of context, but it wasn’t a slip of the tongue—he literally believes this is how the government should run. Manipulating lawmakers with campaign contributions is one of the “fundamental underpinnings of our representative democracy,” Mulvaney explained. “And you have to continue to do it.”..."
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/white-house-now-just-openly-courting-corruption
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The Trump Administration Is Letting Wells Fargo Get Away With Grand Theft Auto
The recent fine assessed by the CFPB is window dressing on a miscarriage of justice.
By David Dayen
"In January, Wells Fargo announced a one-time benefit from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of $3.89 billion. With the 40 percent cut in the corporate-income tax, Wells could write down the cost of its deferred tax liabilities—money it owed down the road to the government. So with the stroke of a pen, Donald Trump made Wells Fargo $3.89 billion richer.
The benefits didn’t end there. In the first quarter of this year, Wells Fargo enjoyed a drastically reduced effective income-tax rate of 18.8 percent, down from 27.5 percent a year earlier. That produced a $636 million savings, on top of the $3.89 billion. Wells Fargo’s Q1 income would have declined year-over-year were it not for the tax law.
When you put Wells Fargo’s ongoing tax bounty against Friday’s $1 billion fine from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for scamming customers on mortgage and auto loans, the penalty looks more like a kickback, worth 22 percent of what Wells Fargo has been gifted in tax savings so far. Over time that $1 billion will constitute a smaller and smaller percentage of the tax perk, more like a tip to the Trump administration—a thank-you for its generous support..."
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-trump-administration-is-letting-wells-fargo-get-away-with-grand-theft-auto/
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Read both articles to understand the depth of malfeasance at Wells Fargo.