Today, at a field hearing in Detroit, as expected, the CFPB announced its first “larger participants” rule, giving itself the authority to supervise, or look inside the mysterious “black box” operations, of the biggest credit bureaus. This is a really big deal for consumers who’ve suffered through the mistakes made by these gatekeepers to financial and employment opportunity. Here are theprepared remarks of CFPB Director Rich Cordray and here is the CFPB press releaseannouncing the rule. The CFPB also wants your credit bureau stories.
I have more details on the importance of this action in my blog from Friday, where I also compare our longstanding fight with the credit bureaus to the fight between the humans and the machines in The Matrix movie trilogy. There are parallels between the credit bureaus and the machines that run the Matrix!
As expected, the CFPB also announced that it would continue its inquiry into which debt collectors should be fully supervised as “larger participants” in the marketplace, rather than issuing that rule at the same time.