Demonstrators hold signs as they attend a protest against US President Donald Trump and DOGE Elon Musk's anticipated plan to close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in front of the CFPB headquarters in Washington, DC, February 10, 2025.
Wall Street’s Deregulation Agenda Will Cost Everyday Americans Everything
The Trump administration has gutted key financial regulators, eliminated services and protections, and eviscerated oversight and enforcement, setting people up for financial harm.
If Californians have a financial dream these days, it’s probably the modest goal of getting by, paycheck to paycheck. A more ambitious goal may be buying a house or building an emergency savings fund. But to a great degree these days, that dream is going to depend on decisions made by elected officials in Sacramento and Washington DC.
At the Academy of Financial Education, based in Fresno, California, we work with everyday people who are not only trying to get by, but are seeking long-term financial stability for their families. People like Aline, a restaurant consultant in the Bay Area, balancing budgets for her family and her business. Or Sara, who is working to increase her credit score and buy her first house.
A major impediment to their efforts is a financial system whose exploitative products flood their social media, TV, email inbox, and every other marketing channel. Buy now, pay later services are simply predatory loans in disguise, hiding the full cost of fees and charges associated with the service. And cryptocurrency, pitched as the next solution to our income woes, is barreling into our economy with little to no oversight.
Our own financial behaviors are intricately connected to the health and fairness of our financial system. The financial services industry, be it Wall Street or newfangled cryptocurrency peddlers, are using predatory and extractive practices that harm workers, families, and communities with impunity. Under their influence, the Trump administration has gutted key financial regulators, eliminated services and protections, and eviscerated oversight and enforcement, setting people up for financial harm. It is ready to allow cryptocurrency into 401k portfolios, putting secure retirements at risk.
In the seven months since the Trump administration arrived, its actions have cost consumers $18 billion.
The current administration has dismantled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), one of the best financial advocates we have in the government. Since the start of this administration, CFPB staff have been fired, ordered to stop working on enforcement actions, and drop legal challenges to financial institutions that are causing people harm. Now hamstrung by funding cuts passed by the Republican Congress as well, it is unable to operate properly.
Congress created the CFPB after the 2008 financial crisis, itself a product of negligent financial institutions. Since then, the CFPB has returned $21 billion to 200 million people through its enforcement actions and saved tens of billions more by implementing commonsense safeguards. Safeguards including a cap on overdraft fees, removing medical debt from credit reports, and regulating tech companies providing shiny new financial products. In the seven months since the Trump administration arrived, its actions have cost consumers $18 billion.
A financial marketplace without the CFPB is an open playground for Wall Street, big banks, and tech companies to profit off you and me—without a single guardrail. Companies like Elon Musk’s PayPal, which almost came under supervision by the CFPB until the Republican Congress rolled back that plan.
The newest industry on the block is crypto. Crypto companies claim they provide financial opportunity, flexibility, and freedom, but we know this is a lie. In California alone, crypto scams run rampant enough that the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) has a running list of them. New legislation in the US Senate aims to all but exempt the majority of crypto platforms and digital assets from meaningful oversight. Cryptocurrency is on the verge of becoming an even more predatory and scammy activity.
The losses of financial protection and oversight make it harder for nonprofit organizations like mine, focused on financial empowerment, to help our clients and community with budgeting, credit scores, planning, and more because we do not—cannot—work in a vacuum. Dismantling the CFPB and allowing crypto to run unchecked creates new obstacles, vulnerabilities, and distractions for our clients, disrupting their ability to plan for the future and pursue their goals. They will be more likely to experience financial loss and unnecessary suffering, and they won’t have a government advocate like the CFPB to rely on.
We need our whole government watching out for working people, not big banks and tech companies. Costs continue to rise and new scams plague the financial marketplace—from predatory buy-now-pay-later loans to shady crypto scams. By deregulating our financial system and dismantling critical allies like the CFPB, our elected officials are leaving everyday Americans holding the bag.
Urgent. It's never been this bad.
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission from the outset was simple. To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It’s never been this bad out there. And it’s never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed and doing some of its best and most important work, the threats we face are intensifying. Right now, with just three days to go in our Spring Campaign, we're falling short of our make-or-break goal. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Can you make a gift right now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? There is no backup plan or rainy day fund. There is only you. —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
If Californians have a financial dream these days, it’s probably the modest goal of getting by, paycheck to paycheck. A more ambitious goal may be buying a house or building an emergency savings fund. But to a great degree these days, that dream is going to depend on decisions made by elected officials in Sacramento and Washington DC.
At the Academy of Financial Education, based in Fresno, California, we work with everyday people who are not only trying to get by, but are seeking long-term financial stability for their families. People like Aline, a restaurant consultant in the Bay Area, balancing budgets for her family and her business. Or Sara, who is working to increase her credit score and buy her first house.
A major impediment to their efforts is a financial system whose exploitative products flood their social media, TV, email inbox, and every other marketing channel. Buy now, pay later services are simply predatory loans in disguise, hiding the full cost of fees and charges associated with the service. And cryptocurrency, pitched as the next solution to our income woes, is barreling into our economy with little to no oversight.
Our own financial behaviors are intricately connected to the health and fairness of our financial system. The financial services industry, be it Wall Street or newfangled cryptocurrency peddlers, are using predatory and extractive practices that harm workers, families, and communities with impunity. Under their influence, the Trump administration has gutted key financial regulators, eliminated services and protections, and eviscerated oversight and enforcement, setting people up for financial harm. It is ready to allow cryptocurrency into 401k portfolios, putting secure retirements at risk.
In the seven months since the Trump administration arrived, its actions have cost consumers $18 billion.
The current administration has dismantled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), one of the best financial advocates we have in the government. Since the start of this administration, CFPB staff have been fired, ordered to stop working on enforcement actions, and drop legal challenges to financial institutions that are causing people harm. Now hamstrung by funding cuts passed by the Republican Congress as well, it is unable to operate properly.
Congress created the CFPB after the 2008 financial crisis, itself a product of negligent financial institutions. Since then, the CFPB has returned $21 billion to 200 million people through its enforcement actions and saved tens of billions more by implementing commonsense safeguards. Safeguards including a cap on overdraft fees, removing medical debt from credit reports, and regulating tech companies providing shiny new financial products. In the seven months since the Trump administration arrived, its actions have cost consumers $18 billion.
A financial marketplace without the CFPB is an open playground for Wall Street, big banks, and tech companies to profit off you and me—without a single guardrail. Companies like Elon Musk’s PayPal, which almost came under supervision by the CFPB until the Republican Congress rolled back that plan.
The newest industry on the block is crypto. Crypto companies claim they provide financial opportunity, flexibility, and freedom, but we know this is a lie. In California alone, crypto scams run rampant enough that the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) has a running list of them. New legislation in the US Senate aims to all but exempt the majority of crypto platforms and digital assets from meaningful oversight. Cryptocurrency is on the verge of becoming an even more predatory and scammy activity.
The losses of financial protection and oversight make it harder for nonprofit organizations like mine, focused on financial empowerment, to help our clients and community with budgeting, credit scores, planning, and more because we do not—cannot—work in a vacuum. Dismantling the CFPB and allowing crypto to run unchecked creates new obstacles, vulnerabilities, and distractions for our clients, disrupting their ability to plan for the future and pursue their goals. They will be more likely to experience financial loss and unnecessary suffering, and they won’t have a government advocate like the CFPB to rely on.
We need our whole government watching out for working people, not big banks and tech companies. Costs continue to rise and new scams plague the financial marketplace—from predatory buy-now-pay-later loans to shady crypto scams. By deregulating our financial system and dismantling critical allies like the CFPB, our elected officials are leaving everyday Americans holding the bag.
- New Report Reveals Relationship Between Rapid Growth of the Financial Sector and the Weak Real Economy ›
- Wall Street to Working-Class Homebuyers: Fuggeddaboutdit! ›
- Obama's Big Sellout: The President has Packed His Economic Team with Wall Street Insiders ›
- Critics Ask If Trump and Musk Are 'Intentionally Crashing the Economy' ›
If Californians have a financial dream these days, it’s probably the modest goal of getting by, paycheck to paycheck. A more ambitious goal may be buying a house or building an emergency savings fund. But to a great degree these days, that dream is going to depend on decisions made by elected officials in Sacramento and Washington DC.
At the Academy of Financial Education, based in Fresno, California, we work with everyday people who are not only trying to get by, but are seeking long-term financial stability for their families. People like Aline, a restaurant consultant in the Bay Area, balancing budgets for her family and her business. Or Sara, who is working to increase her credit score and buy her first house.
A major impediment to their efforts is a financial system whose exploitative products flood their social media, TV, email inbox, and every other marketing channel. Buy now, pay later services are simply predatory loans in disguise, hiding the full cost of fees and charges associated with the service. And cryptocurrency, pitched as the next solution to our income woes, is barreling into our economy with little to no oversight.
Our own financial behaviors are intricately connected to the health and fairness of our financial system. The financial services industry, be it Wall Street or newfangled cryptocurrency peddlers, are using predatory and extractive practices that harm workers, families, and communities with impunity. Under their influence, the Trump administration has gutted key financial regulators, eliminated services and protections, and eviscerated oversight and enforcement, setting people up for financial harm. It is ready to allow cryptocurrency into 401k portfolios, putting secure retirements at risk.
In the seven months since the Trump administration arrived, its actions have cost consumers $18 billion.
The current administration has dismantled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), one of the best financial advocates we have in the government. Since the start of this administration, CFPB staff have been fired, ordered to stop working on enforcement actions, and drop legal challenges to financial institutions that are causing people harm. Now hamstrung by funding cuts passed by the Republican Congress as well, it is unable to operate properly.
Congress created the CFPB after the 2008 financial crisis, itself a product of negligent financial institutions. Since then, the CFPB has returned $21 billion to 200 million people through its enforcement actions and saved tens of billions more by implementing commonsense safeguards. Safeguards including a cap on overdraft fees, removing medical debt from credit reports, and regulating tech companies providing shiny new financial products. In the seven months since the Trump administration arrived, its actions have cost consumers $18 billion.
A financial marketplace without the CFPB is an open playground for Wall Street, big banks, and tech companies to profit off you and me—without a single guardrail. Companies like Elon Musk’s PayPal, which almost came under supervision by the CFPB until the Republican Congress rolled back that plan.
The newest industry on the block is crypto. Crypto companies claim they provide financial opportunity, flexibility, and freedom, but we know this is a lie. In California alone, crypto scams run rampant enough that the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) has a running list of them. New legislation in the US Senate aims to all but exempt the majority of crypto platforms and digital assets from meaningful oversight. Cryptocurrency is on the verge of becoming an even more predatory and scammy activity.
The losses of financial protection and oversight make it harder for nonprofit organizations like mine, focused on financial empowerment, to help our clients and community with budgeting, credit scores, planning, and more because we do not—cannot—work in a vacuum. Dismantling the CFPB and allowing crypto to run unchecked creates new obstacles, vulnerabilities, and distractions for our clients, disrupting their ability to plan for the future and pursue their goals. They will be more likely to experience financial loss and unnecessary suffering, and they won’t have a government advocate like the CFPB to rely on.
We need our whole government watching out for working people, not big banks and tech companies. Costs continue to rise and new scams plague the financial marketplace—from predatory buy-now-pay-later loans to shady crypto scams. By deregulating our financial system and dismantling critical allies like the CFPB, our elected officials are leaving everyday Americans holding the bag.
- New Report Reveals Relationship Between Rapid Growth of the Financial Sector and the Weak Real Economy ›
- Wall Street to Working-Class Homebuyers: Fuggeddaboutdit! ›
- Obama's Big Sellout: The President has Packed His Economic Team with Wall Street Insiders ›
- Critics Ask If Trump and Musk Are 'Intentionally Crashing the Economy' ›