Days after Musk attended President Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration this year, Twitter, now known as X, made its first major step towards building a financial ecosystem. X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced the launch of a digital wallet<\/a> and peer-to-peer payments platform in partnership with Visa, to be launched later this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, Musk is at the forefront of the effort to gut the primary federal financial regulator overseeing the payments business: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRIP CFPB,\u201d Musk posted on X<\/a> last week, with a tombstone emoji.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hours later, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is led by Musk, deleted the CFPB\u2019s X account<\/a> and was granted access to the consumer watchdog\u2019s systems, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. Since then, the CFPB\u2019s acting director has instructed employees to \u201cstand down\u201d from all work \u2013 including fighting financial abuse<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of this is alarming consumer advocates and ethics experts,<\/strong> who say there is a glaring conflict of interest between the world\u2019s richest person simultaneously presiding over the shutdown of the CFPB while also owning businesses that would benefit from weakened financial regulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who was the chief ethics lawyer in the administration of President George W. Bush, told CNN in a phone interview that Musk must recuse himself from anything to do with the CFPB or risk violating criminal conflict of interest law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cElon Musk needs to stay away from the CFPB. That\u2019s cut-and-dry,\u201d said Painter. \u201cIf there is any evidence that he has participated in a matter with the CFPB, impeding the work there, then he has risked violating the statute. That\u2019s a slam dunk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Painter pointed to how the White House has said Musk is serving as a special government employee<\/a> and noted the criminal conflict of interest law applies to all federal officials, except the president and the vice president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt applies to special government employees \u2013 everyone from the secretary of the defense to the janitor who orders toilet paper,\u201d Painter said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not just Musk\u2019s burgeoning payments business that has raised eyebrows. It\u2019s also Musk\u2019s best-known and most valuable company: Tesla.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tesla has a financing arm that provides car loans \u2013 and the CFPB policies car loans. (The bureau does not regulate auto dealers, but it does oversee auto loans like the financing Tesla provides through its subsidiary Tesla Finance LLC<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tesla is on a list of securities that CFPB employees are banned from owning, according to a recent copy of the list viewed by CNN. That list includes obvious companies like JPMorgan Chase and US Bank as well as some automakers like Tesla that have a finance arm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, CFPB employees are not allowed to own Tesla stock, but Tesla\u2019s largest shareholder is front-and-center as the CFPB is being dismantled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s absurdly ironic. It\u2019s turning the notion of government by the people and for the people on its head,\u201d said Christopher Peterson, a law professor at the University of Utah and former CFPB official who previously had been hired by the bureau as an expert witness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, it\u2019s hard to know exactly how involved Musk himself is in paralyzing the CFPB versus his lieutenants and other administration officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Musk has made his views clear, posting<\/a> weeks after Trump\u2019s victory: \u201cDelete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Peterson said the comments from Musk make it unclear if a recusal would even work at this point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf the boss says, \u2018CFPB RIP\u2019 and that it should be deleted, recusal is a little late here. You already told everyone their marching orders,\u201d Peterson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Neither X nor Tesla responded to requests for comment from Musk. The White House similarly did not respond to a request for comment on conflict of interest concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The White House issued a statement on Monday arguing that the CFPB has \u201clong functioned as another woke, weaponized arm of the bureaucracy that leverages its power against certain industries and individuals disfavored by so-called \u2018elites.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUnder the administration of President Donald J. Trump, the weaponization ends right now,\u201d the White House statement said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Later President Trump, in answer to a reporter\u2019s question, said his goal was to eliminate the CFPB, \u201cBecause we\u2019re trying to get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kathleen Engel, a research professor at Suffolk University Law School, told CNN she is worried about who is protecting consumers from financial abuse if the CFPB is paralyzed, even momentarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe CFPB is the cop on the beat. If you want the cops to stay away, you get rid of the police department,\u201d said Engel, who served on an advisory board for the CFPB. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about a real wild west situation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Engel said the \u201cmost obvious conflict of interest\u201d for Musk is X and its ambitions to push into payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the CFPB, the bureau\u2019s enforcement actions have\u00a0resulted in nearly $20 billion<\/a>\u00a0of consumer relief potentially to about 195 million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cElon Musk is trying to cripple an agency that is trying to protect consumers who he is trying to sell products and services to,\u201d said Dennis Kelleher, CEO of Better Markets, a nonprofit that advocates for tougher financial regulation. \u201cWhen they get ripped off, mom and pop on Main Street have no chance on their own fighting against these gigantic financial corporations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n X announced<\/a> in January 2024 that it would launch peer-to-peer payments, \u201cshowcasing the power of living more of your life in one place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to X\u2019s website<\/a>, X Payments LLC is registered with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) as a money service business. X Payments has already received a license to transit money from 41 states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yaccarino said that the X Money Account will debut later this year and the Visa deal is just the \u201cfirst of many big announcements about X Money this year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thank you for reading today's post. \r\nHave an InterStellar Day! ~PrP <\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" i don’t know if i can continue. Seriously people. Everyday its some new horrific headline with this administration. I could just vomit. There is no where to turn for relief. Why is an unelected billionaire governing our government? The latest … Continue reading Concerns beyond X<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
First of \u2018many big announcements\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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