The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a wonderful mandate: to see that Americans get a "fair shake," a "fair deal" from those predatory lenders at the big banks, according to President Obama. Sounds like mom and apple pie. Who could be against that? But what if Americans do not get a "fair shake" from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau itself? What kind of oversight is the bureau subject to? Not the Federal Reserve: the bureau gets its money from the Fed, but the latter has no power over it. Not Congress. No, the CFPB is solely a creature of the executive branch.  Republicans in Congress thought it might be a good idea for Congress to have oversight of this new bureaucracy, but no, the president would have none of it.  As the LA Times cheerfully reports, that would have been "to weaken the authority of the agency and its director."  Oh, we mustn't have that; the executive branch must be primus inter pares, first among equals, right? Isn't that what the...(Read Full Post)