Last week was a significant one for housing finance policy, as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau gathered input on how to reform the underwriting rules that mortgage lenders must follow. With $15 trillion of mortgage debt outstanding, this is a subject of great economic significance for the…
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been controversial since its creation. As an executive agency enjoying Federal Reserve funding independent of the Congressional appropriations process—and run by a single director removable only for cause—the Bureau is unusual and possibly unconstitutional. In its first years of existence, the…
Two recent announcements by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have proponents of increased financial regulation up in arms. The first is the Bureau's expansion of its no-action letter policy to include a regulatory sandbox. A sandbox is a program which allows firms to offer new products under…
I have been vigorously recommending that President-elect Trump replace Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). I still think that replacing Director Cordray is necessary for reasons I've enumerated elsewhere; but on Friday the CFPB filed a petition for a rehearing of a…
After spending some years in both legislative and regulatory policy roles, I've come to even more strongly believe that almost everything you really need to understand regulation can be found in Peltzman's classic 1976 extension of Stigler's original economic model of regulation. Almost everything. What I find lacking is recognition…