Richard Cordray, the first director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), said the agency is under siege by President Donald Trump's administration.
The agency was created after the 2008 financial crash to promote fairness and transparency for things like mortgages and credit cards. Cordray was its first director and once ran for governor as a Democrat in Ohio after serving as Attorney General from 2009 to 2011.
Cordray spoke on WOSU's All Sides with Amy Juravich on Thursday.
Cordray said under U.S. law the CFPB will still exist, even if the Trump administration continues to make cuts to the agency. The CFPB was created in 2010 under the Federal Reserve by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act following the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession.
"The fantasy that you can just wave your hands and make congressional laws vanish because you don't happen to like them, that's not the way our system works. It would be a tyrannical change in our system of government, and it's not something American people will want to allow," Cordray said.
Despite a lack of authority to dismantle the CFPB, Cordray said the agency is under siege by Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who runs the Department of Government Efficiency. NPR reported Musk is seeking to "eradicate" the agency because it could provide key oversight over multiple ventures of his in finance and social media.
Cordray declined to comment on his own political future and plans to WOSU, but that at the moment he had no plans to run for office. He also did not wish to talk about the lack of a deep bench of Ohio Democrats declaring for statewide seats apart from Dr. Amy Acton.
At least one Republican has declared for each of Ohio's statewide seats up for grabs in 2026. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has declared for Governor and former Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is widely expected to be considering a run for the seat.
Cordray also declined to give advice to Acton or other Democrats who may seek office in the Buckeye State.
"I'm not here to talk about that today. I'm here to talk about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is under siege and an alarming threat in Washington," Cordray said.
Cordray called Trump's and Musk's effort to undermine the agency misguided and short-sighted. He said there may be companies out there that will try and take advantage with a weakened federal watchdog.
"There are always some people who had financial companies who are looking to get that advantage...get rich quick. Do things that aren't sustainable in the long run for their customers, but can give them an advantage in the short run," Cordray said. "And those are the people that we need to watch out for and be sure that the law is being enforced aggressively so that they can't be doing that."
Just this week, CFPB's biggest proponent and one of its founders, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to the White House about her concerns over the agency.
"CFPB is the cop on the beat, and that cop is the one that caught the crooks and, so far, has made them give back $21 billion," Warren said in a statement.
Warren urged Trump to lift a freeze on all CFPB rulemaking, enforcement investigations and litigation against financial institutions that she said are breaking the law. Warren specifically cited concerns about how larger banks could take advantage of a weakened CFPB.
JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was in Columbus on Wednesday to open a new community bank branch and tour the bank's Polaris headquarters as he calls all employees back to work full time and in person at offices.
Dimon criticized overregulation of banks, but did not comment directly on Trump's actions against the CFPB. He particularly hit on bank regulations on mortgages, which was a big reason why the CFPB was created in the first place.
"I'll tell you a problem with regulations. People when they say anti-regulation or deregulation, it's really proper regulation. We all need good regulation for food and banks and stuff like that," Dimon said. "But the regulation put on mortgages after the great financial crisis, make a $200,000 mortgage, makes it probably a hundred basis points more expensive because they're excessive. They don't save risk."
Cordray said he wasn't concerned with Dimon and said the two saw "eye-to-eye" for the most part.
"I think a lot of financial companies understand regulation and see the value in it, as long as it's even handed, as long as it is not too oppressive," Cordray said.
