Blast from the past: post on Barney Frank's autobiography

by Jeff Sovern

Barney Frank is speaking today at the Berkeley Consumer Law Scholars Conference. Here's something I posted in 2015 on his autobiography:

I just finished listening to the audio version of Barney Frank's autobiography, Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage, which Frank reads himself. I listened to it to learn more about consumer law--Frank was so involved in creating the CFPB that the statute doing so carries his name--but the book doesn't actually add much to what I have encountered elsewhere on the subject (though it adds a little, as noted below).  Nevertheless, the book is well worth listening to. Frank is an entertaining and informative writer and I loved his volume.  Regular readers of the blog will probably care about many of the issues Frank discusses and will likely enjoy learning more about Frank's insights into Congress and the electoral process. 

Despite what I just wrote, the book has a few interesting items on consumer protection issues.  Critics of the Dodd-Frank Act and other consumer protection laws often charge that government regulation led to the Great Recession in that lenders were forced to make unwise loans by laws supported by Democrats (see below).  This, of course, is hard to reconcile with the fact that at the time the Great Recession hit, we had had a Republican president for nearly eight years, and Congress had been in Republican control for much of that time. Yet somehow, the minority party ruled banking.  In fact, as Frank points out, Republicans opposed efforts to restrain subprime lending.  Here are a couple of memorable quotes Frank includes in an appendix:

In 2007, Jeb Hensarling, now chair of the House Committee on Financial Services, said the following during a Committee hearing to consider a bill to limit subprime lending:

We still have to remember that millions of people have homeownership opportunities due to a subprime market. I am very leery of any legislation that could under cut that market.

And from the Wall Street Journal, a November 6, 2007 editorial about the same bill, titled A Sarbox for Housing: 

Throughout the 1980s and '90s, Congress prodded, even strong-armed, banks into making more mortgage loans to low-income and minority families. Washington enacted anti-discrimination and community lending laws with penalties against lenders for failing to issue riskier mortgages to homebuyers living in poor neighborhoods or with low downpayments and subpar credit ratings. And so it was that the modern subprime mortgage market was born.

* * *

But for all the demonizing [of subprime lenders], about 80% of even subprime loans are being repaid on time and another 10% are only 30 days behind. Most of these new homeowners are low-income families, often minorities, who would otherwise not have qualified for a mortgage. In the name of consumer protection, Mr. Frank's legislation will ensure that far fewer of these loans are issued in the future.

In other words, even though bad government regulation created the subprime market, that market is so wonderful that we shouldn't regulate it. Of course, we all know what happened because that market was insufficiently regulated.  Oh, and just to make clear, I don't agree that bad regulation created the subprime market. 

Senate Banking Committee hearing on nomination of Rohit Chopra to lead CFPB tomorrow, Tuesday, at 10 Eastern

by Jeff Sovern

You should be able to listen here. The American Banker's Kate Berry has a story here, behind a paywall, unfortunately, but if you have Lexis, you can read it there. Excerpt:

[Chopra's] aggressive past statements coupled with the power and high profile that comes with the CFPB job could lead to some pointed questions from GOP lawmakers at his hearing, and potential opposition from some members on the Senate floor. Democrats hold a razor thin majority, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting a tiebreaking vote.

Some critics may bristle at Chopra’s use of more inflammatory language about business malfeasance than the tone set by Kraninger.

To some observers, Chopra is reminiscent of former CFPB Director Richard Cordray, who issued press releases creating headline risk for large public companies. Chopra’s chief of staff at the FTC, Jen Howard, had been the CFPB’s assistant communications director under Cordray. If Chopra is confirmed, she is expected to become the CFPB’s chief of staff, sources said.

“He will be at least as aggressive as former Director Cordray, if not more so,” said Lucy Morris, a partner at Hudson Cook and a former CFPB deputy enforcement director who worked with Chopra in the CFPB’s early years. “His statements are very hard-hitting and the language is quite charged.”

His public comments and tweets provide a road map for how he would govern as the nation’s top cop for enforcing consumer financial laws.

“He has a very lengthy consumer protection record,” said Linda Jun, senior policy counsel at the Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. “He believes in meaningful accountability. When people are harmed and companies break the law, he thinks there needs to be consequences.”

Ballard Spahr held a very informative webinar about what to expect from Chopra, with guest Richard Cordray. If you missed the webinar, you can listen to the last two episodes of their Consumer Financial Monitor Podcast, which recycled much, if not all, of the webinar's content. The Ballard podcast is one of my favorites consumer law podcasts, by the way.

Loyola of Chicago Consumer Law Review Symposium: Racial Justice in Consumer Law

Panel I - Antiracist Policy in Consumer Law - March 4, 4:00 PM (All times are CST.)

The symposium's first panel will highlight antiracist policy arising in the various areas of consumer law. The panelists' expertise and discussion topics range from historical analysis of racist consumer facing practices to modern analyses of consumer protection most needing antiracist interventions.

Deseriee Kennedy - Professor of Law, Tuoro Law Center
Andrea Freeman - Professor of Law, University of Hawaii
Odette Williamson - Staff Attorney, NCLC

Panel II - Racial Inequity In Lending Practices - March 5, 9:00 AM

The symposium's second panel will tackle how wide-ranging treatments of loan recipients can be depending on the race of the applicant. A blend of professors, authors, practitioners, and journalists, the panel all analyze this issue through different lenses to provide a thorough analysis.

Winnie Taylor - Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School
Ted Janger - Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School
Chris Willis - Partner, Ballard Spahr
Bob Sullivan - Author, Journalist

Panel III - The Government's Role on Consumer Protection - March 5, 10:40 AM

The symposium's final panel analyzes what role the government plays in protecting consumers in the areas of housing, healthcare, and business. The panel consists of two professors researching these topics as well as representatives from two organizations working closely and In tandem with the government for consumer protection.

John Yinger - Professor of Economics, Syracuse University
Anne-Marie Hakstian - Professor of Business, Salem State University
Daniel Threet - Research Analyst, NLIHC
Morgan Williams - General Counsel, NFHA

Keynote Address - March 5, 12:00 PM
Kwame Raoul - Attorney General, State of Illinois

Contact LUC.CLRsymposium@gmail.com with any questions.
Registration link for Thursday available here.
Registration link for Friday available here.
Up to 3.5 Hours of CLE credit available. 

CFPB and VA, MA, and NY challenge predatory immigrant-services scam

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York today sued a company called Libre by Nexus, Inc. and its owners for a predatory immigrant-services scam that traps victims into paying expensive, long-term fees. The complaint alleges that Libre preys on immigrants, primarily Hispanics, who speak little or no English and are being held in federal detention centers, by offering to pay their immigration bonds to secure their release. In exchange, the complaint says, Libre demands large upfront fees and hefty monthly payments while concealing or misrepresenting the true costs of its services.

The complaint is here.

Consumer scams run wild during pandemic

Consumer journalist David Lazarus of the LA Times has written We’re living in a golden age of scams as fraud reports surge amid pandemic. He notes that "[i]t’s been clear for months that the COVID-19 pandemic has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for scammers, con artists and assorted slimeballs looking to cash in on this most miserable of moments in our lives." Lazurus points to a new Federal Trade Commission report showing how bad things have gotten. Lazarus goes on to highlight the types of scams that are most prominent and what consumers can do to prevent or mitigate financial harm.

Paul Weiss: The Coming Transformation of the CFPB in the Biden Administration: What to Expect and How to Prepare

Here. Excerpt (footnotes omitted):

As then-Professor Elena Kagan explained in her famous article, “Presidential Administration,” it is the overriding tendency of recent presidents to harness executive agencies’ rulemaking and other authorities and use them as extensions of their own policy and political agendas. Given the CFPB’s broad authorities, its ample funding through the Federal Reserve, and the extent of consumer hardship during the pandemic, it would not be surprising if President Biden fully weaponizes the CFPB in the service of his agenda. * * *

As a result, a Chopra-led CFPB that is part of the Biden Administration will likely aggressively deploy the agency’s rulemaking, supervisory, enforcement, and other authorities to address the financial challenges faced by consumers during the pandemic, boost fair-lending enforcement and seek greater penalties and remedies across the range of enforcement activity, and renew or initiate more assertive approaches to regulating payday lending, student loans, credit reporting, and other sectors.

The essay also discusses numerous areas to watch.

(H/T: Norm Silber)

Cox & Engel paper critiques federal student loan program

Minnesota's Prentiss Cox and Suffolk's Kathleen C. Engel have written Student Loan Reform: Rights Under the Law, Incentives Under Contract, and Mission Failure Under ED, Harvard Journal on Legislation, Forthcoming. Here's the abstract: 

The federal student loan program is a disaster. Over five million people are in default even though Congress provides all borrowers with the right to affordable payments and to discharge of borrowers’ debts in specific circumstances. Many student loan borrowers who could benefit from these rights are unaware they exist or are unable to exercise their rights.

This Article examines the dynamics and incentives that drive the longstanding problem of high default rates and repayment distress among student loan borrowers. Our core finding is that the Education Department adopts a creditors-rights framework for student loan repayment, which is inapposite for student loans because borrowers have unique, federal rights that are unavailable in market credit transactions. We then demonstrate why the mission and track record of the Education Department, including its failure to manage and oversee servicers, make it unlikely that the Department would ever adopt a borrower-rights focus on student loan repayment.

We build the case for the creation of the Student Borrower Protection Agency, modeled in part on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The function of the SBPA would be to serve student loan borrowers. Just as the country needed the CFPB to fill regulatory gaps in consumer financial protection, we need an agency that will deliver to student loan borrowers the rights promised under federal law.

 

Busy week for the FTC

Last week was a busy one for the Federal Trade Commission. Among other things:

 

FTC Acts to Ban Payday Lender From Industry, Forgive Illegal Debt

 

Four Defendants Settle with the FTC for Their Alleged Role in Credit Card Laundering Scheme

 

FTC Sends More than $1.7 Million in Refunds to People who Lost Money to Student Loan Debt Relief Scam

 

Publisher Will Pay More Than $2 Million to Settle FTC Charges That It Targeted Seniors with Phony Diabetes Cure and Money Making Schemes

 

In time for Valentine's Day, FTC data show massive increase in romance scams

More consumers than ever report falling prey to romance scammers, according to new Federal Trade Commission data that show consumers reported losing a record $304 million to the scams last year. A newly released data spotlight shows that the amount consumers reported losing to romance scammers is up about 50 percent since 2019, and has increased more than four-fold since 2016.

The FTC's press statement is here.

When consumers chime in anonymously on a dispute between a business and one of its customers

by Paul Alan Levy

Our latest case about the right to speak anonymously is in federal court in Chicago, flowing from a dispute between a prominent vlogger named Cristina Villegas and a plastic surgeon named David Shifrin who, Villegas complained, “botched my nose job.” Villegas posted a 23-minute-long  YouTube video which recounts the inadequacies that she perceived in the doctor’s work; toward the end, she says that, hoping to forestall a public airing of her complaints, he offered to refund her entire surgery fee (in the high four figures) if she would refrain from talking about the issue. She proclaimed that it was more important to get to tell her story.

Villegas’ Instagram account has nearly 500,000 followers, and her YouTube channel has more than 1,600,000 followers; as of today, her “botched nose job” video has had over four million views. Shifrin has taken no action to prevent her from telling her story directly; he has not, for example, sued Villegas claiming that she made any false statements of fact in her vlog. You would think that, if Villegas has been less than accurate in her portrayal of Shifrin’s work on her nose, it was Villegas with her millions of followers who inflicted real harm on his business. Presumably, though, Shifrin recognized that Villegas’ vlogging business is substantial enough that she can probably afford to defend herself.

Instead, he has apparently tried to salvage his reputation by going after what might have been a weak link: members of the public who, incensed by what they saw in the vlog, took to Google and Yelp to side with Villegas and denouncing Dr. Shifrin. Because both Google and Yelp ask reviewers to recount their own personal experiences with businesses, those companies began to remove the reviews or, at least to downgrade them to “not-recommended” status. But that was not enough to satisfy Shifrin, who filed suit in state court against 78 such reviewers, charging them with violation of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ("CFAA") and a variety of state-law torts, all of which amount to defamation.

Study finds companies treated lower-income and African-American consumers who complained to CFPB complaint database differently during Trump era

Charlotte Haendler and Rawley Heimer, both of Boston College's Department of Finance, have written The Financial Restitution Gap in Consumer Finance: Insights from Complaints Filed with the CFPB. Here's the abstract:

Consumers seek restitution for disputed financial services by filing complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). We find that filings from low-socioeconomic (i.e., low-income and African American) zip codes were 30% less likely to be resolved with the consumer receiving financial restitution. At the same time, low- and high-socioeconomic zip codes submitted an equal share of the CFPB complaints. The socioeconomic gap in financial restitution was scarcely present under the Obama administration, but grew substantially under the Trump administration. We attribute the change in financial restitution under different political regimes to companies anticipating a more industry-friendly CFPB, as well as to the more industry-friendly leadership of the CFPB achieving less financial restitution for low-socioeconomic filers. The financial restitution gap cannot be explained by differences in product usage nor the quality of complaints, which we measure using textual analysis.

CCFL and GMU Webinar on the CFPB Taskforce Report

The Conference on Consumer Finance Law and the Program on Financial Regulation & Technology at George Mason University’s Scalia Law School held a webinar recently titled  “New Directions for Consumer Finance Law. An Insider’s Look at the Report of the CFPB’s Taskforce.” The speakers included Taskforce members Jean Noonan, Todd Zywicki and William McLeod.  

Read comprehensive study of appellate decisions on class certification, with discussion of impact of FRCP 23(f)

Law profs Stephen Burbank and Sean Farhang have written Class Certification in the U.S. Courts of Appeals: A Longitudinal Study. Here is the abstract:

There is a vast literature on the modern class action, but little of it is informed by systematic empirical data. Mindful both that there have been few Supreme Court class certification decisions and that they may not provide an accurate picture of class action jurisprudence, let alone class action activity, over time, we created a comprehensive data set of class certification decisions in the United States Courts of Appeals consisting of all precedential panel decisions addressing whether a class should be certified from 1966 through 2017, and of nonprecedential panel decisions from 2002 through 2017.

In Section I, through a literature review, we identify both prior empirical scholarship and commonly asserted claims concerning federal class action activity and jurisprudence over time. In Section II we present our data and explore the light they shed on questions that have been raised, and assertions that have been made, about class action certification decisions in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Our findings show that, contrary to conventional expectations, in the period since Wal-Mart and Comcast, plaintiffs have been winning certification appeals more frequently than they were formerly, and Rule 23(f) contributed to this recent success. This growth in pro-certification outcomes occurred on both Democratic- and Republican-Majority panels.

Weak Maryland anti-SLAPP law enables noisy bar to preserve its liquor license

by Paul Alan Levy

Last month, a Fells Point restaurant was able to use an apparently baseless threat of defamation litigation to secure a vote renewing its liquor license by the liquor control board despite considerable neighborhood complaints. Baltimore attorney Scott Marder apparently a demand letter to every one of the 15 neighbors who objected, alleging that they had made false statements, stating Choptank’s intention to sue them, and threatening them with spoliation sanctions if they failed to preserve all evidence of their statements about his client

The neighbors’ lawyer, Becky Witt, told me that her clients were intimidated, but that, when she called Marder and asked just that the alleged falsities where, Marder couldn’t remember any specifics. Marder denied Witt’s account of their conversation, but he refused say just what Witt had recounted incorrectly, just as he declined to tell me what alleged false statements had been made about his client. I conclude that his demand letters to the neighbors were baseless.

But Marder’s exercise in baseless intimidation appears to have been effective representation of his client: only three neighbors showed up at the license renewal hearing, and the objections were rejected for lack of substantial evidence.

CFPB's Durbin & Romeo article on the economics of debt collection, taking into account consumers' optimism about whether they will default

Erik Durbin and Charles J. Romeo, both of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, have written The Economics of Debt Collection, with Attention to the Issue of Salience of Collections at the Time Credit Is Granted, 16 Journal of Credit Risk (2020). Here is the abstract:

This paper considers the role of policies that protect consumers from aggressive debt collection tactics. In general, rational consumers will select credit contracts based not only on price but also on the lender’s practices in the case of default and might prefer a contract that offers higher interest rates but more lenient collection tactics. We consider a model in which consumers can be optimistic in that they underestimate, at the time they borrow, the chance of a negative income shock that could cause them to default. This mindset induces consumers to perceive the welfare associated with borrowing to be greater than it is and to place less weight on the lender’s collection practices, which may cause them to prefer lower interest rate contracts even if they are accompanied by high collection effort in the event of default. We report supporting evidence that is consistent with consumers being optimistic when they borrow. We develop a two-period model of consumer borrowing that incorporates debt collection: consumers borrow in the first period, and repay, settle or default in the second. We show in both partial and general equilibrium settings that a restriction on debt collection effort can be welfare improving under some conditions. The restriction operates by reducing the gap between perceived and actual consumer welfare for optimistic consumers.

NY Times interviews a scam caller

by Jeff Sovern

Here. Both written and audio versions of the article are available. The article also reports on scam call centers overseas. I hope this is something the Biden administration moves on aggressively in its foreign policy.

My new article: Six Scandals: Why We Need Consumer Protection Laws Instead of Just Markets

by Jeff Sovern

My new article is now up on SSRN: Six Scandals: Why We Need Consumer Protection Laws Instead of Just Markets. Here' is the abstract:

Markets are powerful mechanisms for serving consumers. Some critics of regulation have suggested that markets also provide consumer protection: for example, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman said “Consumers don’t have to be hemmed in by rules and regulations. They’re protected by the market itself.” This article tests the claim that the market provides consumer protection by examining several recent incidents in which companies mistreated consumers and then exploring how the companies’ sales to consumers fared. The issue also has normative implications because if markets consistently protected consumers, society would need fewer regulations and regulators, as Friedman suggested.

The article finds a more nuanced situation than Friedman and other critics theorized. In three--possibly four--instances, businesses’ sales actually increased after their misconduct became public, despite the fact that, in at least two cases, consumers had told pollsters they would avoid patronizing the company. In two or perhaps three cases discussed in the article, companies suffered declines in sales after their misbehavior became public, and it seems likely that a scandal was at least partly the cause. In those latter cases, the scandal became known only because of laws and those who enforce them, suggesting that it is the very rules that Friedman decried that led to a market response. In other words, laws helped the market achieve a better outcome by enabling consumers to learn of information that they wished to take into account in making purchasing decisions. Though it is impossible to know what would have happened if the problematic conduct had not occurred, the evidence suggests that markets alone are often not enough to protect consumers, or at least that markets are not a reliable consumer protection mechanism. Indeed, in five of the six scandals discussed in the paper, the strong likelihood is that in the absence of rules, regulators, and consumer attorneys, injured consumers would not have been compensated and the troublesome conduct would not have elicited a response that deterred future misconduct. It thus appears that rules and those who enforce them are sometimes the only source of consumer protection.

The Article also offers hypotheses for when consumers will and will not avoid a company that has misbehaved. Factors that may affect consumer response to misconduct include how the choice to patronize the company is presented to consumers; how difficult it is to switch to other providers (e.g., the cost of switching from one bank to another); whether the company has presented itself as catering to consumer values but failed to deliver; and how many consumers are affected.

Arbel & Becher paper: Contracts in the Age of Smart Readers

Yonathan A. Arbel of Alabama and Shmuel I. Becher of Victoria University of Wellington have written Contracts in the Age of Smart Readers. Here's the abstract:

What does it mean to have machines that can read, explain, and evaluate contracts? Recent advances in machine learning have led to a fundamental breakthrough in machine language models, auguring a profound shift in the ability of machines to process text. Such a shift has far-reaching consequences for contract and consumer law, where information barriers have long been the driving force behind a large body of regulation. Our object here is to provide a general framework for evaluating the legal and policy implications of using language models as ‘Smart Readers’—tools that read, analyze, and assess contracts.

Synthesizing state of the art developments, we identify four core capabilities of smart readers. Based on real-world examples produced by new machine-learning models, we demonstrate that smart readers can: (1) simplify complex legal language; (2) personalize the contractual presentation to the user’s specific socio-cultural identity; (3) interpret the meaning of contractual terms; and (4) benchmark and rank contracts based on their quality.

Nevertheless, the implications of smart readers are more complex than initially meets the eye. While smart readers can overcome traditional information barriers and empower parties, they rely on black-box models that sophisticated parties can exploit. Smart readers can close some of the gaps in access to justice, but they also introduce concerns about contractual bias and discrimination. While smart readers can also improve term transparency, they might also lead judges and policymakers to relax their guard prematurely.

The current body of contract doctrine and scholarship is ill-equipped to deal with both the prospects and risks of smart reader technology. This Article narrows this gap. It maps the necessary theoretical, policy, and doctrinal adaptations to the age when machines can automate the reading of contracts.

 

Biden Extends Federal Student Loan Moratorium

On Wednesday, just hours after being sworn in, President Biden ordered the Education Department to extend the current COVID-19 suspension of all federal student loan payments and interest until at least October 1st.

The CARES Act — Congress' third coronavirus relief bill, which passed in March 2020 — directed the Education Department to suspend payments, stop collections, and set interest rates to 0% on all federally held loans. Former President Trump later extended those measures until January 31, 2021. Biden's order will automatically extend these measures for at least eight months. Borrowers will have no obligation to make payments, loans will not accrue interest, and the Education Department will stop collections on the one in five student borrowers who were in default even before the COVID-19 crisis. The student loan suspension applies to federally-held student loans which, according to CNN, include about 85% of total federal student loans, including direct federal loans and PLUS loans.

The move comes as Biden faces heavy pressure to cancel student loan debt altogether. Although Biden called for cancelling $10,000 in loans per borrower on the campaign trails, student loans were not included in the $1.9 trillion relief plan which the Biden team released last week. 

You can read the Education Department's announcement here and more about Biden's student loan suspension here.

FTC Commissioner and CFPB Director-Nominee Rohit Chopra Discussing the FTC's Remedial Authority

by Jeff Sovern

If you are curious to learn more about FTC Commissioner and CFPB Director-Nominee Rohit Chopra, here is a video of him discussing the FTC's remedial authority a couple days before the Supreme Court heard oral argument earlier this month in AMG v. FTC. The event was hosted by Truth-in-Advertising.org (TINA.org).

District Court Denies Request for Injunction Compelling Amazon to Host Parler

by Paul Alan Levy

In a decision issued his afternoon, Judge Barbara Rothstein has denied a motion by the infamous web site Parler seeking a preliminary injunction compelling Amazon to reverse its decision to terminate its hosting of Parler's web site. The judge agreed with Amazon that, under its hosting contract, Parler was subject to suspension, and to termination without notice, if it allowed contents that are “illegal, that violate the rights of others, or that may be harmful to others,” including “content that is defamatory, obscene, abusive, invasive of privacy, or otherwise objectionable.” The judge noted further that Parler had never denied that content on its platform violated the terms to which it had agreed, and that, regardless of Parler’s claimed effort to improve its content moderation system, both at the time of its suspension, and during the litigation, Parler was demonstrably unable to implement moderation sufficient to protect the public from the dire consequences of its users’ violent rhetoric.

The judge rejected, on the merits, the conclusory allegation that Amazon was engaged in some sort of antitrust conspiracy with Twitter to disadvantage Parler as a competitor to Twitter. She thus did not reach (or even discuss) some of the broader (and disturbing) arguments in Amazon’s brief suggesting that section 230 could be a basis for denying antitrust claims based on the deliberate removal or obscuring of content with the (alleged) objective of harming competition.

Biden names Dave Ueijo as CFPB acting director

President Biden has named Dave Ueijo, the chief strategy officer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as the Bureau's acting director. Kate Berry's American Banker story here (may be behind paywall). Excerpt:

“He’s a great interim pick and he doesn’t regard the role as simply a caretaker," said [former CFPB Director Richard] Cordray. "He knows there are important things they need to be doing including focusing on the needs of people affected by the pandemic.”

* * *

Ueijo plans to focus on ways the CFPB can address racial and economic inequality.

“Black, Brown, and Native American communities in particular have borne a disproportionate share of the impacts of COVID,” Ueijo said in the memo [to CFPB staff].

Biden designates FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter as Acting Chair

FTC release here.

Bloomberg's Evan Weinberger Surveys Kraninger's Tenure as CFPB Director

Here. I think it's not behind a paywall.

Kraninger resigns as CFPB director

by Jeff Sovern

The American Banker's Kate Berry has the report here. Meanwhile, CQ Roll Call's Steven Harass reports that House Financial Services ranking member Patrick McHenry is critical of the selection of Rohit Chopra as the new CFPB Director, saying "the selection will foster a culture of “overregulation” at the agency." The article continues: 

”This is proof that the Biden team is pandering to members of the far-left who want to weaponize the CFPB to go after financial services companies they simply don’t like,” McHenry said in a statement. “Mr. Chopra has made it clear his agenda includes limiting consumer choice, driving up cost of credit for everyone through restrictive policies, and hamstringing job creators through overregulation. If the Biden Administration is looking to foster common ground between Republicans and Democrats, Mr. Chopra is the wrong pick.”

Here's my comment in the article:

[Chopra] has been at the Bureau so he already knows how it works and the challenges it faces. He has experience leading a consumer protection agency from his time at the FTC,” Sovern said Tuesday. “He’s creative and he does his homework. I anticipate that he will build on former director Richard Cordray’s legacy in giving consumers the protections they need.”

I can't find a link to the CQ Roll Call article but it is available on Westlaw, at 2021 WL 163540.