Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/28/25: Fired CFPB Director HITS BACK At Zuckerberg, Jamie Dimon, Tech Bros

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Ryan sits down with Rohit Chopra, the former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau now essentially shut down by President Trump. They talk about Zuckerberg, Jamie Dimon, and the landscape of Tech Bros unleashed on America.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at Breaking that process. Mr. Musk, Elon Musk, he has stated they want Twitter X to become a bank, the ability to move and track payments across its platforms. And I think that it's reasonable for Americans to wonder, why is he targeting this little agency? Today's guest is, from one angle, a hero to millions of people for returning billions

of dollars to consumers as the director, former director, of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. To Jamie Dimon, he's an arrogant, out-of-touch SOB. To billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Mark Andreessen, he's a vile threat to the American Republic. He is Rohit Chopra, former head of the CFPB, former FTC commissioner, pushed out recently by Donald Trump. Welcome, Rohit. Great to be with you. So let's start. We have a lot to get through because there has been a lot thrown your way and at the way of the CFPB. But let's start with Jamie Dimon, who, as we just put up there, during a town hall with his own banking employees, just utterly unleashed on you. Arrogant, out of touch, son of a gun, except he didn't say gun, the family program, so we'll stick with gun. Why is Jamie Dimon so angry at you?

Well, I don't know exactly. You probably have some. Well, I get it. This is an extremely emotional time for him and others. One of President Trump's first set of remarks at Davos, actually, he called out Jamie Dimon and Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, by name. The issue of debanking, deplatforming is one that has really cut across lines. And also, there's some real questions about the lawsuit that we brought against JPMorgan Chase and other banks for allowing fraud to fester on Zelle.

I think that lawsuit will let it work through the courts, but there's some questions about whether the new CFPB will simply defund all of its investigations against big banks and big tech companies. And that's really an open one for all of us. There was also something about Jamie Dimon didn't like, something you guys were pushing about letting people move their money from one bank to another. What was that one?

Yeah, some of the largest banks. And I know he was personally very upset. The idea of giving consumers the ability to switch their accounts more seamlessly. You might remember, Ryan. The move your money movement. Well, remember when you actually couldn't change your phone carrier. That's right. Unless you switched your phone number.

And the FCC issued an order saying, no, let's give consumers a little bit more power to vote with their feet. That's exactly one of the laws that had been on the books. It sat dormant. But during my time there, we wanted to make that a reality because we saw the billions of dollars that large banks, credit card companies were able to harvest because they create an obstacle course to switching accounts. Yeah. So you brought up debanking. So let's move to that one, which is not the one I have in here, H1, but let's start with H2. This is Mark Zuckerberg appearing on Joe Rogan's podcast. And I want people to notice that when he's about to say the word consumer, he pretends to forget the name of the agency,

because it isn't helpful to him, I think, to call it the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, because you're starting on your back foot when you're a company that says you're against that. So let's roll H2 here, and then I want to get you to respond to this Zuckerberg allegation. And we had organizations that were looking into us that were not really involved with social media, like the CFPB, like this financial—I don't even know what it stands for. It's the financial organization That Elizabeth Warren had set up. Oh great, and it's basically it's like we're not a bank Yeah, so this is we're not a bank right it's like like what what does meta have to do with this? But they kind of found some theory that they wanted to investigate and it's like okay clearly

They were trying really hard right to like to like find find some theory but it like i don't know it just it kind of like throughout the the the the party and the government there was just sort of i don't know if it's i don't know how this stuff works i mean i've never been in government i don't know if it's like a directive or it's just like a quiet consensus that like we don't like these guys. They're not doing what we want. We're going to punish them. But, um, but it's, uh, it's, uh, it's tough to be at the other end of that. What was it like? Um, well, it's not good. I think the thing that I think is actually the toughest though is, um, it's, it's global, right? So in, in really, when you think about it, the U S government should be defending its companies, right, not be the tip of the spear attacking its companies. All right. So Zuckerberg, who later kind of implies there's previous in this clip, he had said that because they were getting pressure to censor COVID content, then all of a sudden the CFPB comes after them over, which he implies is part

of this kind of pressure campaign against Facebook. So what was CFPB's role in going after Facebook? Well, it's actually funny in some ways because this is a company that just about five years ago launched a big ploy to start its own currency, to start its own way of trading. They had a name for it, what were they gonna call it? It was called Libra. That's right. And what you saw was an attempt,

it was a surveillance program essentially, that if they could embed payments throughout their whole empire of digital properties, they would be able to track payments across the board. So like cookies to the next degree. Yeah. And in some ways, that is really what many say is a goal to ultimately move toward personalized pricing. And look, the truth is, if you call companies, some of these big tech companies, we are a social media company, please.

We know that their tentacles are all over and many have significant aspirations in banking, lending, and payments. We have seen that with Google, we have seen that with Apple, and there are laws on the books, Ryan, that are financial privacy laws. There are laws about how you can traffic credit information like the credit bureaus do. So I'm not going to comment on the investigation. They disclosed it to their investors, the nature of it. but to suggest that some of these companies are not engaging in

some of the same exact practices as big financial conglomerates, I mean, is laughable. I'll tell you that this is also, I think, part of the reason the CFPB has been targeted is because you have big tech conglomerates that are looking to get into banking, lending, and payments, and they don't even want a minor speed bump in that process. They don't even want, I think, to be held to the same standards that when consumers are defrauded or if there's errors in their accounts or if their information is being harvested and trafficked to those overseas, I don't think they want to even touch that. And the truth is there's laws on the books and the job of the CFPB was to enforce it. So this appearance came after Marc Andreessen, venture capitalist, was also on Joe Rogan. Let's move to Marc Andreessen.

I think that's H1 here. We have this thing called independent federal agencies. So for example, we have this thing called the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, CFPB, which is sort of Elizabeth Warren's personal agency that she gets to control. And it's an independent agency that just gets to run and do whatever it wants, right? And if you read the constitution, like there is no such thing as independent agency. And yet there it is. What does her agency do?

Whatever she wants. What does it do though? Basically terrorize financial institutions, prevent new competition, new startups that want to compete with the big banks. Really? Oh yeah. How so? Just terrorizing anybody who tries to do anything new in financial services.

Can you give me an example? Debanking. This is where a lot of the debanking comes from is these agencies. So debanking is when you as either a person or your company are literally kicked out of the banking system. Like they did to Kanye. Exactly. Like they did to Kanye. My partner, Ben's father, has been debanked.

Really? We had an employee. For what? For having the wrong politics. For saying unacceptable things. Under current banking regulations. Okay. Here's a great thing. Under current banking regulations, after all the reforms of the last 20 years, there's now a category called a politically exposed person, PEP. And if you are a PEP, you are required by financial regulators to kick them off of your to kick them out of your bank. You're not allowed to have your politically on the left. That's fine.

Because they're not politically exposed. So no one on the left gets debanked. I have not heard of a single instance of it. So much to unpack there. Let's start with his pep claim. What is a what is a politically exposed person? Well, is there anything accurate in what he said there? There's a lot there. First of all, a politically exposed person certainly would be someone who's like a government official who, for example, could be subjected to bribery, other things. But putting all of the accuracy. You completely misclassified what a political spokesperson is.

Well, I think the point, though, I would say there's a place where I think is important, which is that when it comes to debanking, I don't think people should ever lose their account because of their exercising their religion, speech. And I'll tell you, one of the first things I did years ago was to put forth a stronger policy that made it clear when that type of discrimination or debanking ran afoul of the law. Guess who sued to block it? Who's that? It was actually the bank lobby and the Chamber of Commerce. Then more recently, we went through some court process. What's their business rationale for wanting to block that? I have no idea other than they were saying that, well, that only really applies to lending.

It doesn't apply to banking. And we could go through the argument about whether the law prohibits that. So I said, OK, we're going to propose a rule. We're going to use a different procedure to make clear that you cannot close someone's account or otherwise take a negative action like that based on some of these core things. We did not hear a peep, a peep of support from the big banks and others.

So I think we need to start looking at some of the facts here. We should not allow deplatforming and debanking unless there is some sort of legitimate reason. And I will share with you, we have heard a lot from the banks and others about this. But what we haven't seen is them showing their data. And one of the big places that they are closing accounts is using algorithms. And sometimes they might not even know the answer why they are closing those accounts. But the idea that the CFPB had to take multiple actions against, not just by me, but even my predecessor put in place by President Trump. So I don't know what that is, but I think the idea that somehow both the banks and these fintech companies, we were applying and aggressively enforcing the law when they

were egregiously violating. Did you run into any progressive opposition? Because I know sometimes progressive organizations would run campaigns to say, you know, if this person should not actually have access to banking services. So did you kind of push up against? There had been, you know, it was not, there was definitely, for example, I had undertaken an initiative with respect to greater accountability for BlackRock. BlackRock is an investment giant. I felt that if they were going to be pursuing certain policy goals when

taking over banks, they should actually go through the process of saying, we're taking over a bank rather than relying on some loopholes that say, well, we're just passive. We're not doing anything. And yeah, I'm sure there was others who felt, why don't we just kind of leave them alone? Maybe they agree with the goals they're doing. My point was different, is that it's really about power. because of no reason or a questionable reason or how they're saying they're passive but are really exerting a lot of pressure on boards and CEOs. So I think we got to stick to our principles, which is that the laws on the books are supposed to prevent abuse of power. And sure, maybe I agree with some of the maybe I agree with some of the BlackRock voting policies on shares.

Like environmental stuff. But it doesn't matter. I mean, they should still have to go through the process that we have in place in our laws to avoid abuse of that power, and especially monopoly power. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye.

Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend.

I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for.

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden

years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is, and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's, like, really the GOAT.

Like, he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy.

Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So you passed a rule to bar debanking, and you've got... We proposed one, and we'll see if it gets finalized. Oh, that's an interesting point. It's all House Republicans are actually moving to repeal it. I don't know if you noticed this with a piece of their legislation. So have you been surprised to see one of the number one attacks against the CF being that it was doing the thing that actually it's trying to ban?

Not really. I mean, you's all get on record across the ideological spectrum that people should have a right to a bank account. And we see so many people pushed out of the banking system and the economic impacts of that are real. Now, of course, if they're engaged in money laundering, criminal fraud, others, sure. I mean, I do favor some updates that give people the ability to have some access to the banking system. And many, for example, are kicked out because of overdraft and overdraft fee churning. We got to make sure that people, when you're kicked out of the banking system, it's almost like kicking someone out of the economy. Oh, you're screwed. Yeah. So when he

says that CFPB is terrorizing financial companies and blocking fintechs and other startups from competing with big banks, what does he mean by that? That's in direct conflict with what you just mentioned was JPMorgan Chase's criticism. You know, we actually put into place the ability for smaller players to eat the lunch of their bigger competitors if they're providing better rates of service. Because you're setting up a pathway for people to leave the big banks. To switch. And that was strongly, strongly supported by those new firms that were trying to do it. And look, some of them are doing some great things that allow you to get lower interest rates on your loans, higher rates on your savings.

Look at what some of the banks offered. Even as the Fed raised rates enormously, people's deposit rates barely budged. And we ended up needing to investigate some of that, including suing Capital One for cheating people out of billions of dollars. I think we want to put more power in the hands of consumers for them to fire a company with bad customer service and to vote with their feet. So some of the companies financed by Andreessen in the fintech space or the crypto space say that the CFPB has prevented them from doing what they want to do. What does he mean by that and how you respond to crypto? I don't know. All I know is, you know, right now, in terms of crypto, most of that was really a confrontation with other agencies, not with the

CFPB. The place the CFPB was always looking at is new digital payments, digital currencies. So video game platforms, you know, things like Facebook's Libra project, where it would be used to pay at stores or online. So we were always trying to figure out what's the way we can create these new digital technologies without it being ruined by fraudsters, errors, and how do you make sure there's some base level of consumer protection that people have had on their debit cards and credit cards for decades? And on fintech companies, I don't know. I mean, certainly there have been venture capital firms who have been annoyed that the CFPB has taken some of their law-breaking companies to court. And sometimes, you know, we battle it out in court, but certainly we prevailed in many cases.

And I'll tell you, many of them are extremely well-financed to fight back very hard. Sure they are. So one of the arguments Mark Zuckerberg also rolled out in that interview is that from a national security and a geopolitical perspective, the Silicon Valley and big tech in the United States is ought to be just defended rather than attacked. Let's play H3 here, get you respond to this other Zuckerberg argument. I think the real issue is that when the US government does that to its tech industry, it's basically just open season around the rest of the world. I mean, the EU, I pull these numbers, the EU has fined the tech companies more than $30 billion over the last,

I think it was like 10 or 20 years. Holy shit. So when you think about it, like, okay, there's, it's like, you know, $100 million here, a couple billion dollars there. But what I think really Holy shit. government basically gets to decide how are they going to deal with that, right? Because if the U.S. government, if some other country was screwing with another industry that we cared about, the U.S. government would probably find some way to put pressure on them. But I think what happened here is actually the complete opposite. The U.S. government led the kind of attack against the companies, which then just made it so like the EU is basically, and all these other places, just free to just go to town on all the American companies and do whatever you want. What would you say to Zuckerberg there? Well, you know, we've all gotten various forms of questions. For example, in the past few years,

we did a number of enforcement actions against certain Japanese automakers whose lending and credit reporting was completely botched. Now, the way we do it is we look at consumer complaints. We'll look at where there's actual harm. And I do think it's important for us to prove where are we finding this noncompliance? But on the other hand, this is a strange comment in some way he's made because it was actually, and I was an FTC commissioner at the time, during the Trump administration, we had a bipartisan antitrust complaint against Facebook. Same thing happened on Google. And those have carried forward across administrations. And here's the reason why. In the U.S., we want our economy progressing not based on cheating,

but on competing. And we have found a number of cases where big firms, whether they're domestic, whether they're foreign, have been cornering the market or monopolizing it. We have laws on the books. And just because they are global conglomerates, that does not mean they should not honor our laws. I have to tell you, I really don't think that all of these firms genuinely think of themselves as American companies. I think some of them think of themselves

as just a multinational investor base and the North Star is profit and if they wanna get rid of laws in countries across the world, that's what they're gonna do. But to suggest that Facebook and other big tech companies have been just so squeaky clean when it comes to following the law is frankly a joke. And so speaking of getting rid of laws or ignoring them, this is Elon Musk's famous tweet where he said,

delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies. Interestingly, that was a reply to somebody who was correcting Mark Andreessen and saying, hey, man, you're wrong about this. Actually, the CFPB is against debanking and is fighting it. And Musk, interestingly, comes in and says, basically saying, I don't care, like delete this. And then put up H5, the White House very quickly put out this statement saying CFPB isn't a Wall Street regulator, it's a Main Street regulator, and they are effectively trying to move to shut it down. In their list of bill of indictments basically against them, they list a bunch of things, and I want to run through some of them since we got you here and got some time. So the White House says CFPB targeted a Chicago small business after it complained about the city's rampant crime.

That sounds bad. Why did the CFPB do that? Well, you'd have to ask President Trump's CFPB director because she's the one who brought that case. I reviewed that case. The case was actually a lending discrimination case where a mortgage lender in Chicago essentially was refusing and not offering mortgage loans to certain neighborhoods. I think the idea that it was somehow about, I don't even know what that bullet was saying. But what's funny is that it's, it has nothing to do with that bullet. And it was brought under the last Trump administration. Another one of those bullets, I just noticed, talks about our victim's relief fund. During my time as director, we returned.

Is that the one that they call a slush fund? Slush fund. And what's funny is that it's a victim's relief fund. During my time, we collected, I think, $9 billion in refunds and penalties. And here's how it works. The penalties paid by companies like Apple, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, they go to compensate victims where the defendant may be totally bankrupt, judgment proof. So we won a judgment, I believe it was for $2.7 billion against a nationwide debt relief scammer. We were able to make so many of those victims whole because of that victim's relief fund. So we're talking about something that has really put money in the pockets of people across the country and to suggest that

it is something that is trying to do something outside of its laws. Look, I hate to say it, you know, Mr. Musk, Elon Musk, he has stated they want Twitter X to become essentially a bank, the ability to move and track payments across its platforms. And I think that it's reasonable for Americans to wonder, why is he targeting this little agency? And I think a lot of the opposition is coming from tech conglomerates because it has been a little bit, the agency has been a speed bump in their plans to conquer payments and banking. And I think that that's, Americans deserve to have their financial privacy, financial fraud. These are important laws on the books that we have to enforce, and we shouldn't just be enforcing it against banks. So the White House goes on.

They say the CFPB granted itself broad new powers in the waning hours of the lame duck. The Biden administration described as classic, quote, government overreach, the agency gave itself the authority to regulate Americans' checking accounts by dictating government price controls and unilaterally buried $50 billion in medical debt. Let's take those one by one. So when they say you're dictating government price controls, what are they referring to there? So what I think is that there had been very serious abuses across the marketplace when it came to overdraft. And just to give you a hint, if you click their link, it talks about overdraft. Yeah. We uncovered a number of serious, serious wrongdoing on overdraft, including manipulation of payment order and more. So here's what we did. That's when they move the time that they hit your account. Exactly.

So instead of one overdraft fee, you might get three or four in a day. So they're calling that dictating price control. Well, here's what we did. We took a look at overdraft lending because you essentially, it's a loan. And we found that even if you were overdrawing 35 cents, you might get hit with a $35 fee. I've been there. So the original law says the following. You got to fully disclose the terms and conditions of loans. And what we found is in 1969, the Federal Reserve created a carve out for a specific set of circumstances. It was when you were mailing paper checks through the U.S. Postal Service. Sometimes it was delayed. Sometimes your paycheck came later. And they said,

you know, because you can't really predict this, the bank, you don't have to give all these disclosures. You can just charge a reasonable fee. We then looked at today and now overdraft is overwhelmingly debit card purchases and they're small purchases. So here's what we said. We said, let's update that exemption and say, in general, you got to fess up as to what the interest rate you're charging, fully disclose that interest rate on the loans you're extending. But if you don't want to do that, just charge a reasonable fee and we'll publish what that average is. So they don't have to charge $5 a loan. If they want to keep making big money, they can disclose the interest rate. We really thought of this as modernizing an outdated regulation and

making sure that people are being upfront and honest about the interest rate they're charging on a loan. All right. So that's what the White House called dictating government price controls. Then they say unilaterally buried $50 billion in medical debt. What do they mean by that? Here's what I speculate. We did a multi-year analysis. I can give you a hint by clicking on it. Of credit reports.

Midnight rulemaking from Liz Warren's favorite agency spells even more bad news for cash-strapped Americans. The Daily Caller. So in 2021, we completed a major analysis of credit reports. It used to be that your credit report, the items that were in debt collection was largely credit cards, but something flipped. And we found that debt collectors were parking medical bills on people's credit report, and there were very systemic issues with inaccuracy. Many people already paid it or it was supposed to be paid by the insurance company. And after we published our analysis, the big credit reporting conglomerates immediately said,

we're going to really take off most of this. We also had evidence that it was not even predictive of your repayment on your auto loan or credit card. So we didn't want to just take volunteers for this. We said, you know what? The law actually prohibits medical information from appearing on credit reports. So we updated the rule to put serious limitations and essentially forbid the parking of these medical bills on the credit reports. It would still include, for example, medical bills you paid on a credit card, but the actual bills that you were stuck in the doom loop between the insurance company, the hospital, and others, we found that it was coercive. It was a way to coerce people into paying debt they don't owe. Now, of course,

hospitals, others, they still have many other ways to collect. In some cases, they sue people. But we thought that that was a very reasonable update to stop systemic abuses. And it was broadly supported. And we've seen states across the country enact their own state laws to prohibit that abuse as well. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye.

Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder.

I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is.

And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like, that's what's really important and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better.

So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So my co-host, Emily, couldn't be here for this, but she wanted me to ask you about something that happened at CFPB before you got there, which is, and here's how she put it, the CFPB, so does Rohit agree with this assessment in the

Washington Examiner? The CFPB did play a key role, according to a report from the FDIC's inspector general, in the Obama-era Operation Chokepoint. Even more disturbing, for the past few years, the CFPB has wielded its enforcement authority over housing discrimination to effectively censor speech with which it disagrees. Let's take them in two parts. One, Operation Chokepoint, that was an effort, as I recall, by the FBI to clamp down on gun trafficking by basically, I think, debanking a bunch of arms dealers or something, which, of course, then caught up a lot of people, citizens who were involved in selling weapons, which the right would say is, look, this is

Second Amendment protected activity. So what's your understanding of what CFPB's role was in Operation Chokepoint? I don't know. What I recall was that this was a Justice Department operation, but there was really no consumer law involved. And the CFPB can only really enforce those consumer laws. And I also understand that it was a lot of business accounts. So as far as I know, the CFPB during that time was also worried about bank account access,

trying to make sure there is fair access to bank accounts. So I don't have all the details, but it would surprise me because consumer law is the only thing the CFPB can really pursue when it comes to savings and checking accounts. So what about wielding your enforcement authority over housing discrimination to censor speech? I have really no clue where that allegation comes from. I think it is possible when there are redlining cases, there's data that you take a look at as to where are people denying or not offering loans. And redlining is the concept where you may not even get an application.

You just may refuse to even offer services or lending there. And it is true that in some times the cases do uncover documents that, where the lender is using a lot of charged racial language. But that's not the violation itself. The violation is actually the redlining. So- Right, the speech proves that they're actually discriminating against.

In some ways, the documents can show where there was blatant discrimination. Got it. So the CFPB might find out that black or Hispanic applicants are rejected at a much higher rate and then find the executives using charged language. Exactly. About a specific applicant or about a specific neighborhood. It's a bunch of facts together. I see. I see. But certainly a person's speech cannot trip the, in any way, trip that law. What trips the law is denying or redlining based on a protected characteristic like religion or race. Let's talk for a minute about some of the good stuff

that, from your perspective, Trump has done. You're in an interesting position here in the sense that you came in first to the FTC as what I would say is one of the first FTC commissioners of this new era, really trying to wield the Federal Trade Commission's power on behalf of people against monopolies, against scam artists. And since then, you were later obviously joined by Lena Kahn and Andrew Ferguson and other. So a bipartisan, not that they agree on everything, but a bipartisan sense that something's wrong here and the populist wings of each party actually have more in common maybe than the corporate wings of each party. So let's get together and block some of these mergers and enforce some of these actions. The FTC is still going kind of strong in that mode.

You then left and go over to the CFPB, which is now just getting absolutely slaughtered by Trump. So it's this schizophrenic approach from the Trump administration, where on the one hand, there's good work being done at the FTC. On the other hand, they're dismissing all of these obvious good cases against scam artists and saying that they're going to try to utterly, completely eliminate the thing. So let's pick a couple things. So Trump has talked about capping credit card interest rates. Where do you come down on that and where should the populist right come down on that? And where should the populist right come down on this? Is this, should they understand the attack on the CFPB? Is that the essence of what Trump is doing? Or is there upholding of the FTC's populism? Is that kind of who they are? What the heck is going

on here? I think that's, the jury is really out. Because on one hand, like I mentioned before, you saw President Trump call out Jamie Dimon. You saw campaigning on capping credit card interest rates. That's totally in conflict with defunding the Wall Street police. And that's really what seems to be happening to the CFPB. Again, the jury is out about which way it will turn out. But it seems like right now, a lot of the big tech companies are wielding a lot of control over some of these pieces.

But then let's see what happens. At the FTC, I was part of that original bipartisan, it was a three to two vote, two Democrats and a Republican versus two Republicans voting out that big antitrust complaint against Facebook. Lina Khan came to the FTC, really fixed the complaint to continue to prosecute it. The trial will occur. Google, others. We'll see. I think there is a lot more energy from across the ideological spectrum that is questioning abuse of power.

Now, there is also a strong corporate influence across the board. When I got to the FTC, Ryan, in 2018, I was really shocked to see what I saw. It was hard to understand what planet people were that age. It was basically a dead fish. There was massive abuses, for example, in subprime mortgages where the FTC really took a back seat. There was- Still in 2018. Well, I was saying in the 2008 era. Then you have opioids where there's enormous, enormous abuses by pharmaceutical industry where the FTC is sort of missing in action. And the thing that really got me

was I had discovered that there was a policy, a bipartisan consensus over multiple administrations that made in USA fraud should not be penalized. So we had cases come in where they were ripping off the made in China label, ripping off the made in Mexico label, and putting on a fake Made in USA label. And the FTC's response was catch and release. And I thought that that was a serious—we changed that policy. We changed the policy toward pharmaceutical mergers, which was put on a blindfold, rubber stamp, yes, and let them run wild. Obama too, right?

Multiple administrations. So I think that that really was something that it needed a massive reboot, but we'll see. We'll really see right now if it does continue or not. And I think that is what all of us will have to keep a close watch on, on whether the big tech companies and big pharma companies will be the ones that call the shots or not. Emily had also floated this thing that's going around on the right. It's this idea that why not just move the CFPB under the FTC? FTC is now doing

some good consumer work. Let's just go with that. Well, we tried that and it was a disaster. We had, for other people to say, why don't we put it under this office called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Jamie Dimon said that, actually. He said, just do it through the OCC. We tried that. It was a massive failure. So what occurred after the financial crisis, we killed one of the agencies that failed.

And we also... Which one was that? It was called the Office of Thrift Supervision. Oh, that's right. Who was clearly at the beck and call of big subprime mortgage lenders who were paying the bills at the agency. So it was in some ways a consolidation, a reorg plan, but it was a smart one because what it did is it took, it stripped away the authorities of some, it eliminated an agency and eliminated divisions in certain places, but it created a huge amount of accountability because now you know there's an agency that was responsible. If you just park it

somewhere else, it will just be a blame game of, oh, it's someone else's problem. And we saw how much it just did not work. So look, I'm always open of ways we can make things more effective. One way to make a lot of things more effective is to make sure that our states can also enforce these laws. That's a place where people across the board agree. But I don't think hiding the function in an agency that has other responsibilities, maybe that can work, but also it can really dilute accountability for that leadership. The Federal Reserve Board, they were responsible for regulating a lot of the rules around mortgages. I think everyone saw that the Fed, they were paying attention and prioritizing other things. And that's why it needed to be stripped away.

Now, what we're discovering is that it turns out that the market actually does want some rules. So if you can put up A7 here, this is a post by Dave Dayen referencing an article that he had written in the American Prospect. He says, new from me, Russ Vogt, who's the OMB director, was on the verge of breaking the mortgage market by shutting down a core function provided by CFPB. But he blinked and in so doing revealed that regulation is actually pretty important. So what happened here? CFPB eliminated all, effectively eliminated all rules, and it wasn't the consumers that rebelled. It was the mortgage lenders. So what happened here? Well, I'm not really sure what is going on over there other than to say that we actually usually had all of these regulated

companies wanting us. They were the ones coming to us, go after these companies that are clearly breaking the law. How are we supposed to compete if there is egregious law breaking? But there was also other pieces, which is in some cases there are laws on the books and the CFPB will publish data or other pieces of information that helps the whole market comply and make sure they're on the right side of the law. And I think what you saw there was just one example where the mortgage lenders want to know the key pieces of data that keep them on the right side of the law. One of the things I was proud of when I was at the agency is instead of forcing a lot of these companies, especially small companies, to hire all sorts of lawyers about novel situations, new types of products, We just published the legal opinion

and basically allowed any company to just rely on that. And if they didn't agree with it, sure, they could choose their own way of doing it and maybe they'll take that risk. But we really reduced the need to hire a lot of high-priced lawyers. And I think that's actually what government should do. Government shouldn't be serving the interests of the biggest companies. It should be providing information and in many cases, bright line rules whenever it can,

because that's what's simpler for the new folks who want to challenge the corporate royalty. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fat phobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame

one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there.

Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister.

There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives.

My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they, like, rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now, too, so his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is, and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's, like, really the GOAT, like, he's a legend, so he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me, just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy.

Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Needuration, correct me if I'm wrong on the dates, you spoke to the Federalist Society about the overlap between a kind of progressive consumer protection philosophy and a conservative consumer protection philosophy. Would you have stayed on in a Trump administration if that had been a possibility? And did you think that it was within the realm of possibility? Well, as you remember, a lot of the big tech companies in the banks were saying,

he'll be out in minute one. I actually stayed a few more weeks. And it was not because they forgot about me. I think I swore an oath to a five-year term. And I shared that I'll keep serving until replaced. And I completely respect that in this agency, the president has the right to choose. Now, I think this is a big open question right now is that is this agency going to be a tool of how the most powerful actors keep their power?

Or is it going to continue on some of the things we did to make sure that consumers have the ability to fire companies with bad customer service and take their business elsewhere? That they can capture interest rates on their deposit counts, lower rates on their loans, and that there is not a crime-ridden marketplace, that there is law and order,

or is it just all going to be completely lawless? Again. Defund the police? Well, in some ways, that is what is happening. I think defunding and firing the investigators, right now we're hearing that all firing the investigators. Right now we're hearing that all of the investigations against big companies for some serious wrongdoing are just being paused and they're being told,

don't do any work. Who is that helping? I think it is only helping the law-breaking companies. the announcement of basically the pulling back of an enforcement said, over the last four years, many working class Americans with limited means faced unexpected medical bills, auto repairs, and higher grocery bills. This is Russ Vogt, who's OMB director and also appointed as the new head of the CFPB. One company set up an innovative solution by creating a platform to allow borrowers and lenders to connect for loans at no interest, with borrowers able to tip the lender and also donate to keep the platform going. Shockingly, the CFPB tried to destroy this company, Solo, which incurred millions in legal

fees and had to lay off 30% of its workforce. It was wrong and we dismissed the case more to come but the weaponization of consumer protection Must end now if people go to this ex post they can see that there's a community note on it that has survived attack attempts to try to strip it but you know, why would the CFPB try to destroy this company which is just trying to You know for free connect people with lenders Connect struggling people with willingness to lend. Well, as you mentioned, I believe there was a community note because this is a company that had been repeatedly sanctioned by multiple state regulators and attorneys general, I believe. And in those cases, many of those states come to the CFPB and say, you have to solve this issue nationally.

Like we can't do this. It can't just be a game of whack-a-mole. And I believe that law enforcement action was actually to address a sophisticated, what's known as a dark pattern, a digital design device that forces you into something you don't want. And you can take a look at the complaint. They make it seem like, oh, you can just tip, but what if the tip is forced? What if the tip is actually just a disguised way to charge an exploitative interest rate in violation of state law. So I think that that's a lot of people are going to look at this potential dismissal of where might there be some foul play because this is something that almost seemed like

a bread and butter case to many people. Right. Like this is what the CFPB is set up to do. It is. The company says it's doing one thing. The allegation is doing something different, walking away with all the money. Yeah, if you're saying something is a no interest loan, but you're just disguising the interest charge,

the triple digit interest charge as a, by another name. I mean, that's really what, it's kind of, again, it's bread and butter type fraud that the agency's supposed to go after. And I know there was some hope among the banks and major corporations that, and M&A firms, that this would usher in an era,

Trump would usher in an era of new mergers. Capital One and Discover are attempting to pull themselves together. You've been critical of that. Do you think this will get stopped? And why should people watching this give a rip if Capital One and Discover merge? Yeah, well, look, right now we have a situation where we remember inflation. Everyone was saying, well, inflation is going down, inflation is going down. But the truth is, is for many people's monthly budgets, they felt that they were more and more stressed. And something that inflation often doesn't measure

is interest rate costs, the costs that you have to pay on your credit card, your auto loan, and your mortgage, and more. And we have a situation in credit cards where there is a small, almost click of credit card companies that dominate the market. I mean, the top six have a huge market share. And we saw interest rates on credit cards surge way beyond what the Fed raised rates. And people are paying, I think, something like $120 billion in interest and fees on their credit cards. If we had a competitive interest rate in a credit card market where people were getting a rate that was really tailored to them, this could be something that could save people hundreds of dollars and for some people, thousands of dollars per year. And some of these companies focus on subprime borrowers where the highest rates are. So if you have a couple of players consolidate down, the people who will pay the price are those families. And I think that this is not some academic question.

It is really about, are you going to be put on a treadmill of debt or are you going to get to benefit from a competitive marketplace? And we'll see what happens. But certainly we know the president, there's people from all across the political spectrum who feel that the credit card companies need to really be reined in. But again, the jury is out. I guess my last question for you then would be, there's this famous clip of FDR at one of his, I'm sure you know this, one of the Democratic conventions where he says something like, you know, the bank, the bankers have decided that they hate me and I welcome their hatred.

You seem like the bankers and the big tech companies have decided they hate you. Do you welcome it or where do you come down on the, I welcome their hatred? I don't take it personally. I feel like I get it. There are folks that feel that law enforcement and regulators shouldn't be a watchdog. They should be a lapdog. They should be someone who bats their eyelashes to meet with famous CEOs. And the truth is, that's not what we swear our oath to when we take these jobs. It's very clear, equal justice under the law, that has got to mean something.

And it doesn't matter how powerful or connected you are. We're supposed to have laws that afford rights to our people. And it is up to those who sit in those offices to vindicate them. And even if that means you will be subject to threats, harassment, people following you, it stinks. But you just got to do it because that's what I think the Constitution and our laws want to see. And we've seen when law enforcement and regulators do the bidding of the powerful or those who break the law, none of us really benefit from that. Last question. Do you see hope in this moment? And if so, where? You know, I think that we are starting to see places where there is a desire to hold powerful people accountable, but we also see situations where the police

and law enforcement and regulators are being muzzled and censored and not being able to do their jobs. So it's a jump ball right now. Maybe we can finish with, we can play that clip of FDR at the DNC. But Rohit, thank you so much for coming by the studio. Appreciate it. Thanks so much, Randy.

And we know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said... Wait a minute. I should like to have it said of my second administration

that in it these forces met their master. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Oddly. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things

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