Hacker News Reader

Comment by Geeek | Hacker News Reader

I mean, that's what old CFPB was.

They ignored the debanking issue for a long time, likely because it was somehow framed as a partisan issue, despite it affecting people across the political landscape. The issue falls squarely within their mandate, so it’s ridiculous that it took so long to address it.

CFPB is inherently political, like all government agencies. Of course it ignored the debanking issue. CFPB was just serving its current masters.

Alright, then you're replying to the wrong comment.

They did not "ignore debanking." CFPB was responsible for investigating violations of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which it did vigorously until its rules were rewritten in 2026 to essentially gut the law by agency rulemaking edict.

The whining about "debanking" was in reference to crypto companies that were being tied to illegal transactions, and Jan 6 insurrectionists.

As is typical for this administration, the hard day-in-day-out work of the CFPB has been gutted so regular Americans no longer have protection against predatory financial firms, and instead the agency is being used for a witch hunt against people who were following the actual laws of this country in ways that hurt this president or his friends

Their mandate includes protecting the consumer from “unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices” and ensuring that markets for consumer financial products are fair, transparent, and competitive. It’s not much of a stretch to say that suddenly and opaquely depriving people of their bank accounts, without any recourse, qualifies as a violation.

> The whining about "debanking" was in reference to crypto companies that were being tied to illegal transactions, and Jan 6 insurrectionists.

And Only Fans content creators, and gun shop owners, and payday loan vendors, and ordinary people who were paid in crypto, and oil and gas companies, and tobacco/vape sellers, and right-wing political organizations, and LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights organizations, and and and. Your attempt to reinforce this as a partisan issue is denied.

Given the importance of banking in this society, it should be regulated as public infrastructure, which comes with rules around transparency and fairness.

We'll see who Trump's CFPB actually stands up for. My guess is that it's not going to be "ordinary people payed in crypto" and entirely Jan 6ers, crypto scammers and criminals who paid the president bribes.

This is a good bet especially because his CFPB has already made an administrative rule change indicating that they will not be enforcing the ECOA anymore.

Now that’s actually a fair point, as long as you don’t pretend that debanking is completely legitimate and only affects the “bad guys” (who of course must deserve it).

IMHO debanking should never happen without a court order. If it needs to happen under a temporarily sealed docket, for financial privacy reasons, fine.

Again "debanking" describes a lot of the ECOA violations the CFPB was previously investigating.

ECOA doesn’t protect people based on profession, political engagement, or source of funds, AFAIK, just the typical protected categories (race/gender/age/etc).

Right so instead of enforcing the ECOA the CFPB will be used by this gangster president to go after institutions that wouldn't do business with his criminal associates

Yet another example if the collapsing rule of law in the American klepostate

The debanking apparatus should not exist outside of a court order. Hopefully this forces Congress to do something about it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com