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CFPB changes office logo, affirming name change amid Mulvaney’s crusade to burn it all down

Big day for name changes.

Mick Mulvaney prepares to testify on Capitol Hill, April 18, 2018 in Washington, DC. CREDIT: Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Mick Mulvaney prepares to testify on Capitol Hill, April 18, 2018 in Washington, DC. CREDIT: Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

IHOP lit up the internet Monday after announcing it will now offer burgers and changing its name to the much stupider “IHOB” — International House of Burgers, rather than the International House of Pancakes.

There’s another name change, though, that’s getting less attention. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is actually the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (BCFP).

CFPB head Mick Mulvaney has grown increasingly frustrated with people calling the agency by the wrong name, but AP Style, which most news outlets follow, hasn’t changed its guidance and thus the agency is still consistently referred to in the media as the CFPB. (Political appointees at the bureau have reportedly gone so far as to ask the AP to change its guidelines.)

At any rate, the logo at the CFPB officially was officially changed Monday. The nonprofit Public Citizen tweeted a photo and joked, “Welcome to the… Best Consumer Fraud Place? Or perhaps the Bureau for Corrupt Financial Predators?”

“Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection” was the name used in the 2010 Dodd-Frank statute that established the agency, Mulvaney explained in April. It’s merely a scrambling of the same words, but it’s enough to mix up people looking for information and confuse consumers — the consumers the CFPB is supposed to protect.

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Such pedantic changes are just the latest in Mulvaney’s efforts to ruin the CFPB from the inside since he took over as acting director last fall.

As a member of Congress, Mulvaney voted against the creation of the bureau he now oversees, and since taking over the agency, and, as the Hill recently noted, Mulvaney often says that the only reason he doesn’t burn down his own agency is because it’s illegal.

Instead, he’s worked to make sure the agency does nothing, including and perhaps most terrifyingly, retreating from payday lending crackdowns and dropping lawsuits against payday lenders. Mulvaney also fired all 25 members of the agency’s advisory board and called for more complaints from the public.

Mulvaney has also refused to even request funding for the agency, which is allowed to request whatever funding it believes it needs from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is then required to fulfill that request. For his first fiscal quarter, Mulvaney requested $0 for the agency and said it would use emergency funding to operate.