Should be some fireworks at the CFPB tomorrow.....

Who Will Be Running Consumer Agency on Monday?

Come Monday morning, who will be running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Over the weekend, the answer wasn’t clear.

Trump administration officials on Saturday defended the president’s legal authority to name his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, as the acting head of the bureau — an independent watchdog agency that has been an obstacle this year to President Trump’s efforts to eliminate or loosen many business regulations. Mr. Trump made the appointment late on Friday, after the abrupt resignation of Richard Cordray, the agency’s director.

Mr. Trump’s announcement was intended to thwart a move by Mr. Cordray earlier in the day to elevate an official from inside the agency to take on temporary leadership of the bureau.

Now, both sides say the law is in their favor, setting up a clash that may well end up in court.

President Trump and his administration are working to roll back regulations on businesses. The consumer bureau has been a prominent holdout. When Congress created it six years ago, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, it gave the agency broad powers over a wide variety of financial products, including mortgages, credit cards, bank accounts and student loans.

The consumer bureau is still carrying out the agenda it developed under President Barack Obama, issuing new rules — like a recent regulation intended to curtail sharply the payday lending market — and sanctioning financial companies for practices that it considers unfair or abusive. Nearly 30 million consumers have collected almost $12 billion in refunds and canceled debts because of the agency’s actions.

But the bureau has long been vilified by Republicans as an overreaching, aggressive arm of government.

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