President-elect Donald Trump's billionaire appointment to help lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency said Tuesday that he wants to eliminate an agency that one consumer advocate described as "a model of efficiency and cost-effectiveness."
Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he owns, that he wants to "delete" the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which has returned nearly $20 billion to members of the U.S. public in the form of monetary compensation, canceled debt, and other relief since its creation in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
"There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies," Musk declared.
Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, countered in a statement that the CFPB "was created specifically because none of the overlapping financial regulatory agencies prioritized consumer protection."
"But there's no reason to think facts or evidence have anything to do with Musk's views," said Weissman. "Asking the world's richest person, with a direct interest in a wide range of business lines, to run a project to review the federal government's overall operations is absurd and fundamentally corrupt—and this issue highlights exactly why."
Weissman noted that Musk has "reportedly obtained money transmitter licenses for X in more than three dozen states and still appears determined to turn X into an 'everything app' based around a payment service," an effort that "would be subject to regulation by the CFPB."
"In fact, the CFPB has just finalized a rule to supervise large tech companies offering digital funds transfer and payment wallet apps," he continued. "In short, Musk is calling for elimination of the consumer protection regulator over a business line he seems poised to enter... This is systemic corruption at a grand and intolerable scale."
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