And, So it Begins…………….Trump’s Acting Consumer Protection Director Begins Immediately to Stop Protecting Ripped Off Americans and Helping Predatory Financial Companies: As reported in The New York Times:

“The defanging of a federal consumer watchdog agency began last week in a federal courthouse in San Francisco.

“After a nearly three-year legal skirmish [read the complaint here], the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau appeared to have been victorious. A judge agreed in September with the bureau that a financial company had misled more than 100,000 mortgage customers. As punishment, the judge ordered the Ohio company, Nationwide Biweekly Administration, to pay nearly $8 million in penalties.

“All that was left was to collect the cash. Last week, lawyers from the consumer bureau filed an 11-page brief asking the judge to force Nationwide to post an $8 million bond while the proceedings wrapped up.

“Then Mick Mulvaney was named the consumer bureau’s acting director.

“Barely 48 hours later, the same lawyers filed a new two-sentence brief. Their request: to withdraw their earlier submission and no longer take a position on whether Nationwide should put up the cash.

“It was a subtle but unmistakable sign that the consumer bureau under Mr. Mulvaney is headed in a new direction — one that takes a lighter touch to regulating the financial industry.”

In another ominous sign, Acting Consumer Protection Director Mulvaney disclosed that he is going to dramatically politicize the CFPB, which is supposed to be independent like the Fed, FDIC and other financial regulators.  He announced that he is going to assign political staffers to the career professionals who head up the CFPB divisions.  Confirming that that the fox was being put in charge of the henhouse, The American Banker reported that “industry representatives have welcomed Mulvaney’s leadership.”

Taking the cops off the Wall Street beat isn’t just happening at the CFPB.  Bloomberg reported on one of many other recent examples, an OCC “Plan to Stop Bankers From Seducing Regulators Dies Under Trump.”