Getting ripped off by your student loan company or for-profit college? Squatter Mick Mulvaney, in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for just long enough to destroy it, doesn't care. The office in the bureau that is intended to fight for student borrowers is being shuttered, Mulvaney has informed staff.
The division has helped return $750 million to student loan borrowers to compensate for abusive practices by lenders. It has helped more than 60,000 borrowers get answers from lenders about student loan repayment.
And it has sued Navient, the nation's biggest student loan company, claiming it gave borrowers bad information. […]
"Shuttering the CFPB's student lending office is an appalling step in a longer march toward the elimination of meaningful American consumer protection law," said Christopher Peterson, financial services director at the Consumer Federation of America.
CFPB spokesman John Czwartacki said that "contrary to malicious rumors and misinformation being spread elsewhere, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection is not shutting down its efforts to protect and inform students."
Czwartacki described it as a "modest org chart change" to keep the bureau in line with its statute.
The division is being moved into the broader financial education unit, which makes it sound an awful like there won't be any more investigating or enforcement being done. It's a $1.5 trillion industry rife with fraud, which is why since 2011, the CFPB has returned so much to borrowers—$750 million. The student loan market has also not recovered from the 2008, and according to the Department of Education about 4.6 million borrowers were in default on their student loans as of December 31, 2017. That's about 10 percent of the total student loan borrowers.
Which isn't going to do much to improve Trump's standing with the 18-34 demographic, where he's current 33 points underwater.