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White House Cuts Entire Staff at Financial Markets Watchdog
Republican destruction of our government continues, this time a group charged with keeping an eye out for future financial disasters. Funny how the run up to financial collapse always seems to occur as Republican "leadership" destroys the regulations surrounding it.
The Trump administration moved on Wednesday [August 8, 2018] to shrink a government agency tasked with identifying looming financial risks, notifying around 40 staff members they would be laid off....
Staff at the Office of Financial Research (OFR), an independent bureau within the U.S. Treasury that analyzes market trends to spot financial risks, were told....jobs would be eliminated as the administration sought to cut the OFR’s budget by 25 percent to around $76 million....
While Republicans attack groups like OFR as wasteful, $8,000,000,000 is promised for a make-believe Space Force.
These watchdogs have frozen or are rolling back rules introduced following the financial crisis, such as curbs on predatory lenders and the designation of some firms as systemically risky.
....the bureau provides a critical function by gathering data on areas such as banking, lending and trading from the country’s complex web of federal and state regulators to provide a bird’s-eye view of system-wide risks.
The OFR is one of several financial regulators being [destroyed] under Trump, including the Financial Stability Oversight Council, also housed within the Treasury, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.