This is about as self-serving as a billionaire can get. Musk plans to abuse his newfound power as Trump's DOGE to protect plans for a new financial service from consumers and to remove safety requirements for Tesla. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/elon-musk-put-277-million-into-the-election-now-he-s-200-billion-richer. That is a return on investment of the century. Musk is planning to turn his X (formerly Twitter) into a financial services platform similar to Venmo, but offering far more serivces.. https://www.pymnts.com/financial-apps/2023/musk-x-will-encompass-users-entire-financial-life-by-2024Eliminating guardrails, allowing Musk to abuse customers as he sees fit in providing financial services is in his best interest, but not in consumer or public interests.Musk sees the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as redundant and unnecessary. I see it as the only viable guardrail to keep consumers from being victims of illegal and unfair treatment by powerful banks. “When I say payments, I actually mean someone’s entire financial life,” Musk said during a company all-hands call last week, per a report by the Verge.“If it involves money, it’ll be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So, it’s not just like send $20 to my friend. I’m talking about, like, you won’t need a bank account.” Imagine a power like the one he represents trying to sell consumers on "efficiency" and DOGE that eliminates consumer protections from financial service providers while he is planning to launch a financial services project as far-reaching as this. This is beyond corrupt, using his relationship with Pres. Elect Trump to get it done using the cover of eliminating duplicative agencies to save taxpayer money. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/06/doges-musk-ramaswamy-try-to-sell-congress-on-huge-spending-cuts.html
Update: 12/21/24 This is what the CFPB is doing, for example, that local and state consumer regulators do not have the ability and resources to do. CFPB sues JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo over Zelle payment fraud
Another Musk self-serving plan: Musk is unsafe at any speed. Musk plans to use his power to remove safety regulations that damage Tesla's interest. Trump team set to end key vehicle safety rule opposed by Elon Musk's Tesla: report
Add this to the already extensive stranglehold billionaires have in media and what we can hear and see to get our news. MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Democracy has an oligarch problem. Musk is a player.
More on CFPB:
This, from https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/11/resistance-is-not-enough-democrats-have.html ..... billionaire Elon Musk in charge of Trump's current thinking about cutting "duplicative and unnecessary agencies" has just targeted the recently instituted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau . (CFPB)Unnecessary for whom? Certainly not necessary for a billionaire. Duplicative of what agency? It was set up to do what other agencies had failed to do or had the power to do. Per Google AI, The FTC's Bureau of Productions for Consumer Protection ICFstops unfair, deceptive, and fraudulent business practices by collecting complaints and conducting investigations, suing companies and people that break the law. developing rules to maintain a fair marketplace. I spent over 20 years as an executive with consumer protection agencies, one similar to the CFPB on the local level, and a credit counseling agency (non-profit) , dealing with debt, foreclosure, and local, public, and private agencies attempting to help consumers deal with these kinds of financial problems. However, when we attempted to alert the Federal Trade Commission about a pattern of civil fraud, there was no easy way to do it nor was there a focus at the FTC to deal with consumer complaints. Musk does not have a clue of how important the Bureau is. Per the bureau:
- 4 million+ consumer complaints received responses
- $20.7 billion+ in financial relief as a result of CFPB actions
- 205 million+ people eligible for financial relief and their current target: credit card and bank junk fees.
Alarm bells are ringing as Trump has indicated a potential desire to turn the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, into a political weapon and to set interest rates per political considerations. If the Fed begins to raise interest rates as inflation raises its ugly head again, Trump may try to replace the members with loyalists so he could control interest rates to make his regime look good politically. That move would be fought tooth and nail by business interests. The Federal Reserve has the only tool available to fight inflation. They control an overheated economy using interest rates. While high interest rates post-COVID were politically painful, in the long run they have brought inflation down to nearly 2%, an annual rate economists consider healthy.
Elon Musk's current relationship will likely run into conflict with Trump over tariffs and the environment (Tesla and batteries are important to him, and they depend on environmentally sensitive customers) Musk also understands science and its value to Space X. Cuts of government service runs counter to his business tech orientation which is highly dependent on science and data collecting. How that plays out will be a fascinating drama to watch. V Conflict with Trump's team members have already begun. Musk, top Trump adviser clash over Cabinet picks
Possibly an area of conflict between Musk and Pres. Trump is if Project 2025 is implemented. Eliminated as unnecessary are whole agencies at the EPA. . ‘Agencies To Be Deleted’: Vivek Ramaswamy Says DOGE Will Pursue ‘Mass Reductions,’ Fight Bureaucratic ‘Pushback’ In MAGA'S mind, environmental and climate research is unnecessary. Global warming is a hoax, per Project 2025 and Donald Trump. They must think if it is not collecting data that is reported in the media, global warming will go away. Besides, these regulatory agencies cut into corporate profits, and those agency cuts are needed to offset the tax breaks to the rich that will bloat the debt and deficits. Project 2025 proposes to eliminate any reference to man-caused global warming in government agencies including eliminating agencies who keep track of such unnecessary stuff since there is no global warming man causes. Among those on the cutting block are possibly Boulder's National Atmospheric Research labs, and NOAA's chief research facility also located in Boulder, Colorado. . https://www.noaa.gov/about-our-agency
Interesting, however, is that Trump's pick for energy czar is from Denver, who believes there is climate change, but it is not a crisis. https://www.denverpost.com/2024/11/19/chris-wright-colorado-energy-secretary-nominee
On the other hand, Elon Musk may see a business opportunity. He already has billions worth of government contracts, especially in space travel, exploration, and rockets. That is his business model. It is taking over stodgy government agencies and replacing them with money-saving contracts under his control and for profit. Running science agencies would more than benefit his bottom line and the automotive and space agencies that already make him the richest man in the world. Trump's victory brought Tesla and Musk 70 billion dollars. It also means that those agencies would serve him, but not the public interest. and competitors.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/16/elon-musk-trump-treasury-tariffs/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/climate/trump-noaa-climate-data-weather.html
https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/clee/research/other-research-initiatives/environmental-guid
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2024/07/what-project-2025-would-do-to-climate-policy-in-the-us/
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