Apr 102015
 

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By G. Steven Bray

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has launched a new Web site to solicit complaints about creditors. Handling consumer complaints isn’t new for the CFPB. What is new is you can gripe anonymously, and the CFPB won’t attempt to verify your story regardless of how outlandish it may be.

Think your lender screwed you on that late payment? Flame them with a post on the CFPB site for the whole world to see.

The CFPB readily admits that most consumer complaints it receives are baseless, and only 7% last year resulted in monetary relief, but the CFPB thinks it’s important to support victimhood.

The CFPB says it launched the site at the urging of consumer advocacy groups, and those groups are most likely to benefit from it. Recent history suggests the groups use consumer complaints to shake down banks for operating funds. It’s cheaper to toss half a million dollars at ACORN than to battle them in court, and it’s easier on the reputation. Consumers will view the stories as credible because they appear on a government Web site, and the press has a poor record of correcting the story when complaints turn out to be bogus.

It’s a shame the CFPB continues to make creditors the pariahs of the economy. It just makes it that much harder for an economic recovery to take hold.

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