‘I need a conservative to explain why this is a good thing;’ Elon Musk plans to destroy free market predator protection
Well, shocker! Elon Musk has more than alluded to his desire to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
If you’re unaware, this government agency is essential for monitoring free trading in the United States. CFPB ensures financial institutions like banks, lenders, credit reporters, debt collectors, and most prominently, Wall Street. Without the oversight of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the potential for corruption, embezzlement, insider trading, and unregulated interest rates would drive millions of people into poverty.
It’s almost sad how unsurprising this is. You don’t have to be a stock market wiz to understand just how far this man will go to cut corners and hoard his wealth; just consider how he’s reportedly treated Grimes in his personal life.
Musk’s official statement on the subject was a post on X, “Delete CFPB,” followed by, “There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies.” This comes from his arrogant tour flaunting his potential appointment as head of the Department of Government Efficiency in President-Elect Donald Trump’s office.
We can only imagine the heavy budget cuts Musk is salivating at the mouth to make to reduce corporate oversight and obliterate social programming. What grinds our gears is how this influx of cuts will affect the nearly 2000 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau employees. In an economic frailty, cutting government work will oversaturate the job market with unemployed workers, creating an environment where companies can exploit these people’s desperation and pay lower salaries for high-skill labor. This, in turn, would inflate most consumers’ lines of credit, turning some to social programming (if it still exists), which would significantly expand most US citizens’ debt, which then could stilt the country’s economic growth.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is also one of the only government avenues where Americans can complain and appeal against financial institutions who grift them. The invention of this bureau wasn’t some roundabout way to get a lobbyist’s grandkid hired; it came as a necessary service to protect not just US citizens but the country as a whole. Proposed by Elizabeth Warren in 2007 at the tipping point of the 2007/8 financial crisis, it was passed in response to the Great Recession in 2011. Not only does the CFPB protect individuals, but monitoring financial institutions contributes to stabilizing the US dollar and keeping the United States economy in stride among the other leading global nations like France, Russia, and China.
It’s baffling that Elon Musk can so blatantly air out his intentions of bleeding the United States dry in his greed and be applauded in the process, but alas, this is what the American people voted for: the right to be swindled.
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