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US Consumer Protection Official Puts Equifax Probe on Ice (reuters.com)
From a report on Reuters: Mick Mulvaney, head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has pulled back from a full-scale probe of how Equifax failed to protect the personal data of millions of consumers, according to people familiar with the matter. Equifax said in September that hackers stole personal data it had collected on some 143 million Americans. Richard Cordray, then the CFPB director, authorized an investigation that month, said former officials familiar with the probe. But Cordray resigned in November and was replaced by Mulvaney, President Donald Trump's budget chief. The CFPB effort against Equifax has sputtered since then, said several government and industry sources, raising questions about how Mulvaney will police a data-warehousing industry that has enormous sway over how much consumers pay to borrow money. The CFPB has the tools to examine a data breach like Equifax, said John Czwartacki, a spokesman, but the agency is not permitted to acknowledge an open investigation. "The bureau has the desire, expertise, and know-how in-house to vigorously pursue hypothetical matters such as these," he said.
The con artist administration doesn't want to upset private industry by holding them accountable for their actions (or inactions in this case). Wells Fargo is simply a feel-good tactic.
After all, if he won't take responsibility for all his failed businesses, because as he'll tell you none of those were his fault, why should other businesses have to be held liable?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Federal consumer protection against predatory PayDay loans was "relaxed" also. Gotta save Equifax? How much did they contribute?
"the agency is not permitted to acknowledge an open investigation"
Which is it?
News Flash: Trump’s picks don’t do their jobs.
In other news: The sky is blue.
To Big to Jail.
Is the CFPB even supposed to be dealing with this? Yes, Equifax is a "financial" outfit, but CFPB is about fraud and abuse in mortgages, credit cards and student loans (according to it's vaunted former director Cordray.) CFPB is now the official identity theft arm of the Federal government? This story is based on the false premise that CFPB is supposed to be investigating this.
I always figure the Fed's do very little to provide any notable help in these cases. Couple probes that are just BS to make you think they are actually doing something. Yet you read people who want even more government over sight, yes let's add to the payroll more idiots who don't have any power or ability to fix anything.
POWA!
Because the 40% demanded it, not knowing much of anything beyond their fat, hairy, drunked-red noses!
The CFPB should not exist. These matters should be handled by the Federal Trade Commission and the courts via law suits. This CFPB thing is a scam. A mall cop to make people âoefeelâ protected. Literally the only thing CFPB has done in the last 7 years was mandate credit card bills list a payoff schedule to show how bad minimum payments are. This could and should have easily been done with a law or regulation from FTC.
Democrat/republican, this is what you people want and voted for... But let's not let that stop the ever lovin' blame passing.
I wish we could wake up the non voting majority to vote both factions out. They could start this year by voting every incumbent out of the house. That would be so cool! We could vote for people that will actually prosecute criminals! My god! We could actually make America great again, in the right way, with no moderation or compromise in the quest for liberty, truth, and justice!
All your wounds and chronic problems are self inflicted. I, for one, have run out of sympathy for you idiots. If you reelect all these people again! after all of this, you can all fuck off! Shame on all of you!
If the government decides not to hold the executives available, who will?
Perhaps we need to learn from the example that Vietnam sets.
Those pesky consumers have been running roughshod over our sacred corporations for too long.
This is when someone from the industry or similar industry being regulated gets someone who was their former employee to head the agency that is charged with regulation or in this case protecting consumers from these industries put in as head of the regulating agency to effectively prevent it from acting on behalf of the citizens of the U.S..
This condition is pretty new (at least on the widespread scale it is). In 1970, lobbyists who didn't work for companies and were policy or foreign policy specialists numbered around 100. By 1990 that number was more than 10,000 and nearly all worked directly for companies. Effectively the U.S. government has been taken over by corporate interests in that time (its far more blatant like here with Mr. Mulvaney with the Republicans who have no shame in it being public). Not sure how we get out of it either, seems self reinforcing.
I'll believe 3 unnamed sources in a credible news paper before I believe Donald Trump, who tells such obvious lies that he actually thought he could tells us there were more people in the configurations than we saw in photographs of the events.
But maybe you'd like to enroll in Trump University, where he lied to students in order to con them out of $25k, swiped onto their credit cards if necessary.
Rube.
In Belgium we haver the National Bank (BNB) who hold all information of all credits. I am just goig to talk about personal credits, not proffesional credits as I do not have enough knowledge about that.
If you go to a bank or credit company or car dealer ship or store and want to open a credit or loan, there will be some things that they will need to verify:
1) Are you of legal age
2) Do you live in Belgium officially
3) Are you on the BNB blacklist
4) Will you be able to pay back.
So the first time you go, there will be nothing on the BNB and if your income - your cost of living (rent , clothing and food) leaves sufficient room for a credit or loan, you get one.
e.g you make 1000EUR. Rent is 500 and cost of living is 500, no loan. You make 1250, you could get a loan up to 250EUR per month in payback.
Say you take one of 100EUR. the next one will be a max of 150EUR.
Yes, cheating is possible. It is called fraud, so nothing to do with any of this.
If the customer is unable to pay (this includes going in red for more than 3 montths with your bank account) you will be on the black list for 1 year starting from the moment you have paid back the amount you are behind, regardless if you have enough. That means no loan, no new car, no house you can buy.
Every company that gives loand has to check this. If you give a loan to a person on the blacklist, he does not have to pay it back. you can ask nicely, but if there is a loss, it will be 100% on the company. If you give a loan of somebody who clearly could not pay it back, you will be 100% resposible if they don't. (Fraud is something different)
Every bank does this. That mean that every bank must be able to see the needed (not wanted) information. So what does e bank see? ...)
1) The number of kredits
2) Type (e.g credit, loan,
3) The monthly payment if the total amount is used
4) The total amount
5) Blacklisting due to late mpayments more than 3 months.
What do they NOT see?
1) The name of the other companies
2) Late payments less than 3 months.
Each person has the possibilaty to ask the information and they will get the names of the company.
This obviously works over secure Internet. So even IF people would get the database, the things you can do with it are pretty limited. As a company we already have access. If you are not a compamy who does loand, you are unable to do anything with it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
For corporations to do whatever the fuck they want. Individuals? Not so much... it's on a sliding scale determined by your net worth.
Shameful shit.
This administration is rotten to the core. I get that they want smaller government. That's fine. But for the love of fuck, this industry has demonstrated endlessly its inability to police itself. Service the public! The only people this move services are Equifax themselves and any possible corrupt government officials. If we won't treat the mishandling of half of all Americans seriously there is NO amount of insecurity which will be taken seriously.
The news these days is continually awash in tales of nefarious goings-on, but almost always from anonymous sources, and no less the case here. When some leaker puts out an insider scoop (or some reporter invents one) without a name attached, remember that it's to serve someone's agenda and treat it like a rumor, because that's what it is.
Please can I have the moderation option: +1 irony.
"Firstly, there seems to be a lot of deep-state resistance to Trump's agenda. "
We also need to consider the extraterrestrial element. However, that is being nullified by the Catholic Church's influence who the aliens are aligned with politically.
We'll never know if the Satanists come in and muck up the works but my bets are on the Girl Scouts of America getting involved at some point.
Benghazi! Text messages! It's not collusion!
1. Equifax and similar companies have bribed the legislature to pass laws exempting them from libel laws with respect to credit information.
2. So, if you as a consumer have financially and socially harmful lies being spread about you by a muti-billion dollar corporation, there is no legal remedy for you.
3. So, we the citizens of the United States of America should all agree to never convict anyone of murder for murdering the management, owners, and stockholders of said company if the murderer is being lied about in their credit report by said company. If the person can show in court, that the company was lying about them, thereby financially and socially harming them, and that they brought it to the attention of the company, and they did nothing, then, that should be considered "Self Defense" and the murder of the management, owners, and stockholders of the company should be considered "Self Defense" and the charges immediately dropped.
Sticking your head under a rock won't make this all go away.
People did elect an administration that made cutting back on regulation a central plank of it's campaign. This is part of that. The idea is that the market should sort these things out. People should start demanding their financial institutions stop doing business with Equifax and/or stop doing business with institutions that do.
/.. OTOH, I'm reminded of the meme about leopards eating faces....
Now, you can counter that is virtually impossible, but the counter argument is that if the government would get out of the way there's be more competition. Regardless, people voted for this. Lots of them, many of them right here on
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We will never be able to undo all the damage Trump has done and will do!
"So long as big corporations are making money, who gives a shit about stupid little peon citizens and their stupid little problems?"
It's not petty to object to Trump lying about his inauguration crowd despite photographs which obviously contradict his claim.
He lies about stuff that everyone can see is wrong because he lies about everything, no matter how blatantly obvious his lie is.
You can't take the word of a constant liar for anything.
Only a total rube would believe this obvious scam artist, but republicans are very stupid, so it is what it is...
Lock him up !
You would not believe Trump if he told you the sky was blue.
I don't have to believe Trump about that. Fortunately a lot of what he lies about I don't have to believe because I can check to see if it is true. What's astonishing is how many lies he tells that are easily and transparently shown to be false. Even about things where there is no benefit to him lying beyond stroking his own ego. But worryingly he does it about things that matter too. So no, when someone is a pathological liar I tend to reflexively not believe them until I see evidence supporting what they say.
The problem with people who judge President Trump so harshly on such inane things...
Spare me. The man is in a position of immense power and what he says matters whether we like it or not. He tells little lies and big lies but the point is that he cannot be trusted.
At some point you stop convincing people that he is bad when they realize you are just petty.
If you haven't figured out by now that Trump is a horrible human being and a terrible president then you never were going to be convinced in the first place and will support him no matter how reprehensibly he behaves.
this is one of the rare instances where a corporate death penalty would have served the economy. The flaw in corporations is they can sometimes be a vehicle for externalizing risks from the people who profit when risks harm others. Having the share holders and board punished is the only way to prevent that flaw in the corprorate system. If you amass information on other people it creates a risk to those people that didn't exist before. It's your responsibility to protect that and if you don't there has to be consequences. There's plenty of other companies in this market so having one go boom would be a good incentive to the others.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
So if someone doesn't do their job, when is it good and when is it bad?
If they do not do their job it is generally bad unless they give a reason for not doing their job. In this case it is particularly bad because there was no reason given and because failure to secure data like this is far more important than whether a company gets fined or not: it risks undermining a fundamental financial service on which many others rely. This is no doubt why other arms of the US government offered to help: they understand how important it is that there is some degree of confidence both from consumers and other financial companies in the credit check service.
Secondly, the president is responsible for what happens, but not at fault for what happens in the administration.
Correct, and if he reverses this decision explaining that it is vitally important that major breaches like this are fully investigated in order to maintain confidence in an essential financial service then he would be doing his job. However, if he lets this stand then he is at much at fault as those making the decision because he is agreeing with it.
you don't have to agree with everything the president stands for
Indeed you do not. However, you are allowed to demand that your political leaders clearly explain their aims and policies and competently carry them out. I see close to zero evidence of either from Mr Trump. Fortunately, he is not my president but even the few things he does where I might agree with his actions (his aims never seem to be clear and often appear to shift on a whim) are carried out in such a hamfisted, incompetent manner that almost seemed designed to antagonize as many people as possible. This is why he faces so much opposition and never seems to get things done where a more competent person with some degree of self-control would avoid the cheap shots and the unfiltered stream of thoughts so that the job actually gets done. It is not some bizarre conspiracy resisting his rule it is just all the people he managed to tick off unnecessarily.
The problem with people who judge President Trump so harshly on such inane things is that eventually people have had enough of you.
This in response to a comment on a settled cause of consumer fraud where vulnerable people had their pockets emptied because of Trump. You call *THAT* inane and then act like you're on a high horse. Go troll elsewhere please.
This is part of Humpty-Trumpy's "Making America Great Again" by eviscerating all those "job killing" regulations like:
* roll back protecting the environment: clean air/clean water, allowing coal companies to dump into rivers
* roll back privacy and corporate limitations in communications: killing net neutrality
* remove banking regulations https://www.washingtonpost.com...
* remove protections for Seniors in Nursing Homes: https://www.democracynow.org/2...
* giving National Park lands to developers: https://www.vox.com/energy-and...
and dozens more ever frighting yet to be seen "de-regulations" that reduce citizen rights, protections, and hand our wallets to corporations. All the while the GOP protects Trumpty by replaying a slow motion Saturday Night Massacre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
People, the only way to change this is campaign finance reform. It has to start at the State level. The GOP is worried about a midterm slaughter and the Kock Brothers alone are using $400M to try and change past performance: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/2...
You would not believe Trump if he told you the sky was blue.
That is because he is a pathological liar. The fact that you believe everything he says makes you a mark. A rube. A sap. A sucker.
According to THREE unnamed sources in the article. Much more believable than ONE unnamed source, three times better! [..] Yep, I'm just going to assume this is 100% false. Sorry, Fake News has made me dismiss every anti-Trump story that relies on unnamed sources.
Thank you for your opinion Anonymous Coward, but since you are only one unnamed source, by your own standard your opinion is Fake News.
Lol.
Fucking wrecked.
Not surprisingly, Mulvaney has been taking money from Equifax, Experian, and other entities the CPFB has been investigating, and has delayed, or ended investigations against them.
https://www.commondreams.org/n...
Then again what else do you expect when the appointed leader of a government organization believes that organization shouldn't exist. (e.g. Rick Perry, Ryan Zinke, Scott Pruitt etc.) Dismantling of government oversight, de facto bribery (not de jure only due to only ridiculously strict interpretations of the bribery law, explicit quid pro quo situations being prosecuted, and seldom even then.)
DMCA - Chilling free speech since 1998.
The administration can feel free to refute these and other anonymous sourced leaks at any time. Until that happens, I'll stick with a little rule: if it looks like something this administration would be doing and smells like something this administration would be doing, it's probably something this administration is doing. Thank God for the patriots who out them on this.
... raising questions about how Mulvaney will police a data-warehousing industry ...
He won't. He was appointed to undermine the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
From Mick Mulvaney to Run Consumer Watchdog Agency He Hates and others:
As a congressman, Mulvaney called the CFPB a “sick, sad joke.”
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Right. As if anyone would dare upset the Fueher
If you haven't figured out that all politicians are very similar and horrible people, I'm sorry for you.
Trump doesn't resemble any politician I've seen in my lifetime at least here in the US. He certainly doesn't resemble any previous president in the history of our country. So no, he isn't similar at all.
There was more abuse against civil rights in this country during Obama admin than during Trump - and Bush and Clinton were equally bad.
Is that what you tell yourself to help you sleep at night? Pathetic...
Its single-director structure and funding outside the congressional appropriations process — it is financed by the Federal Reserve — make it unaccountable to elected officials.
kill yourself, pussy
In this case, the source of the leak is probably from within the agency itself, from some investigator who is upset that the new management is working for the corporations that they're supposed to be protecting people from. Perhaps the hope is that by leaking to the press they can shame somebody into reversing the decision.
dom
The reason payday loans were attacked is the same as for profit schools. They offered poor people an opportunity, and keeping poor people poor is very important for keeping them Democrats.
It's funny, back in 2016 Fox News was more than happy spouting conspiracy theories about Hillary's health citing unnamed sources. Back in 2011, none other than Donald Trump cited unnamed sources that there was conclusive evidence that Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii. It's funny how naming sources only seems to matter when the story disturbs your worldview.
You choose to dismiss anti-Trump stories. Nothing "made" you do it. Please accept that you have completely shut down the thinking part of your brain and are relying on your amygdala to think for you. Sad!
I love the irony of your last line. It's hard to have trust in the right-wing media, because they have spent about 20 years shitting all over the facts and telling us it's truth compost. It's getting to the point where fact-checkers don't even bother anymore.
nothing sticks to him. He's still rockin the same approval numbers as he had when he was elected (give or take).
It's a combination of factors. First, he makes folks feel good. Make America Great Again hits ya right in the feels. Second, it's the whole "What do you got to lose" factor. The Dems moved hard right thanks to Bill Clinton with corporatist Dems taking over the party. There's been a few movements to move things back left (Bernie Sanders, Justice Democrats, etc) but they haven't gotten anywhere yet. They're trying to primary Feinstein, but not sure if that's going anywhere. Meanwhile if you ask CNN for a top 20 list of Democratic contenders for the next Presidential election Bernie isn't even on the list.
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It's not really the rubes that scare me. It's the ones that pretend to believe him even though they don't - those guys scare me.
The Emperor has no clothes.
Trolling is a art,
My default assumption these days is that if Trump says something, it's a lie. If I can check, and feel like bothering, I'll occasionally find I was wrong. But not usually.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Well, I guess that means that Equifax's executives responsible for the data breach matter more than the 143 million Americans who they collected sensitive financial data on.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
slows down the corporation's ability to destroy the privacy of their customers. Unfair!. #MAGA
Or maybe: +1
Since I can't figure out how to post Russian, comment should have been:
Or maybe: +1 pronitsatel'nyy
Yes, this could've been avoided if I previewed properly. Guess I like to live dangerously.
My default assumption these days is that if Trump says something, it's a lie.
One day he'll admit to it, and your mind will explode.
"Both human deployment of the patch and the scanning deployment did not work. The protocol was followed .. The human error was the individual who is responsible for communicating in the organization to apply the patch did not." transcript
Sole Equifax security worker at fault for failed patch, says former CEO
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If there was a way to opt out of doing business with Equifax, I would have done it years ago.
You would not believe Trump if he told you the sky was blue.
History shows that I should at least suspect his motives for telling me something obvious. Perhaps he opens with a truth only to follow up with a lie.
At some point you stop convincing people that he is bad when they realize you are just petty.
Liberals are a bunch of meanies. All they do is hurt the President's feelings.
The president is very much responsible for things that happen in his cabinet. Mick Mulvaney is a political appointee, and the president is responsible for making those nominations. Those appointees serve at the pleasure of the president, who can fire them as he sees fit. Trump certainly hasn't been hesitant about trying to fire people. Trump doesn't need a reason to fire Mulvaney, and as long as nobody can demonstrate corrupt intent, the president wouldn't be in trouble for doing so. It would be totally legitimate to fire Mulvaney for not doing his job, and I doubt Congress would protest at all. The president can also dictate enforcement priorities through executive orders, and instruct his administration how to allocate resources within the boundaries set by law. Trump would be well within his right to dictate that data breaches be investigated as the top priority and to punish negligence by the maximum extent permitted by law.
It's funny, back in 2016 Fox News was more than happy spouting conspiracy theories about Hillary's health citing unnamed sources. Back in 2011, none other than Donald Trump cited unnamed sources that there was conclusive evidence that Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii.
Interestingly, of these anti-Clinton and anti-Obama rumours, and the various anti-Trump rumours, all supported only by unnamed sources ... it's only the anti-Clinton rumours that have turned out to be true (through her being caught on video collapsing in public).
So, are you living in a universe where the mainstream media wasn't revealed to be colluding directly with the DNC and the Clinton campaign, often giving them veto power over stories, giving them editorial privileges and worse, and wouldn't you know, the slant they gave to almost all articles was exactly the same as the strategy the Clinton campaign was using to try and discredit Trump :-/ Hmmm. Because this happened. Wikileaks confirms. We have the smoking gun.
To me that's a far greater danger to democracy than anything Trump has done. The media are supposed to be the 4th estate, keeping the government in check - and they failed miserably for the US election. At least with a Trump presidency, we're seeing the media actually doing their job, after 8 years of them acting as Obama's attorney.
Hillary collapsed in front of the entire nation and needed to be thrown into her limo like a sack of potatoes. And her minders *did not even look surprised*! Think about what is normal when your boss collapses: You first freeze in disbelief; then you rush forward to help him/her; you make eye-contact and say "Oh my God, are you OK?!"
When Hillary collapsed, the staff closed ranks as if this were well-rehearsed choreography, and *faced outwards* rather than *towards her*, and threw Hillary unceremoniously into the vehicle. THAT's what I find so amazing about it.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Ah yes, the "Deep State." The usual charge made by people who don't realize that President is not a purely authoritarian position. IE, the Justice Department, FBI/CIA, court system, etc, are supposed to be independent of the President even though he appoints some of their members. They are not, and should not be the tool of the President in any democratic government.
Those people are paid well and trained to not pause when the shit hits the fan. When she fell, it could have been a sniper. They were facing outward to survey the scene.
Mind you, Hillary's imagination about being under fire is breathtaking, but what you saw was SOP, and you don't even have the sense to realize it.
It's funny, back in 2016 Fox News was more than happy spouting conspiracy theories about Hillary's health citing unnamed sources
You're joking right? Its not a conspiracy if she literally collapses on camera and has to be carried to a car by two secret service agents like a sack of potatoes
Trump tried to de-fund the CFPB but it is paid directly by the Federal Reserve. He's working hard to make sure citizens have less protection than ever.
I don't know why, but some still worship the ground Hillary collapses on.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
it's always a mixture of wonder, amusement, and proxied embarassment when one true-believer goes after another. like when a Christian denigrates a Muslim for the kooky things they believe, or a Democrat wags their finger at a Republican cause everyone knows the good politicians are on their donkey side. I never really get used to it. There isn't a single group of humans which have a monopoly on complete self-delusion.
There's no privacy policy for us, so why not screw the sheep.
You would not believe Trump if he told you the sky was blue.
Given Trumps record, if he told me the sky was blue and water was wet, I'd still have to go outside and check for myself.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You would not believe Trump if he told you the sky was blue. After all, somewhere in the world there is a cloud.
The problem with people who judge President Trump so harshly on such inane things is that eventually people have had enough of you. At some point you stop convincing people that he is bad when they realize you are just petty.
You'll never get any traction in this thread. Judging from the moderation of your post and what you responded to, Progressives are out in force today.
I wish there really was a "deep state" which could keep crap like this from happening. This is why we need professionals in DC who are interested in keeping their jobs rather than taking care of the people who'll keep them rich once they're kicked out of their jobs.
What scares me is the possibility of reverse psychology here.
Trump lies about everything, in an obvious, Russian-style way.
What happens when he tells the truth about something, and we dismiss it as just another lie?
Why are you obsessing about Hillary? She's not on-topic in this discussion.
Firstly, there seems to be a lot of deep-state resistance to Trump's agenda.
It's called "Rule of Law', along with a large amount an administration not knowing what the fuck they are doing, and the inability to spell 'Illuminati", and it all adds up to 'Deep State".