Finance

For years, American financial companies have fought the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the courts and media.
Now, with the CFPB on life support after the Trump administration issued a stop-work order and shuttered its headquarters, the agency finds itself with an unlikely ally: the same banks that reliably complained about its rules and enforcement actions.
If the Trump administration succeeds in reducing the CFPB to a shell of its former self, banks would suddenly find themselves competing with non-bank financial players, including big tech and fintech firms with far less federal scrutiny than FDIC-backed institutions.
“Payment apps like PayPal, Stripe, Cash App, those sorts of things, they would get close to a free ride at the federal level,” said David Silberman, a veteran banking attorney.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, leaves the U.S. Capitol after a meeting with Republican members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on the issue of debanking on Thursday, February 13, 2025. 
Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

For years, American financial companies have fought the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — the chief U.S. consumer finance watchdog — in the courts and media, portraying the agency as illegitimate and as unfairly targeting industry players.
Now, with the CFPB on life support after the Trump administration issued a stop-work order and shuttered its headquarters, the agency finds itself with an unlikely ally: the same banks that reliably complained about its rules and enforcement actions under former director Rohit Chopra.

That’s because if the Trump administration succeeds in reducing the CFPB to a shell of its former self, banks would find themselves competing directly with non-bank financial players, from big tech and fintech firms to mortgage, auto and payday lenders, that enjoy far less federal scrutiny than FDIC-backed institutions.
“The CFPB is the only federal agency that supervises non-depository institutions, so that would go away,” said David Silberman, a veteran banking attorney who lectures at Yale Law School. “Payment apps like PayPal, Stripe, Cash App, those sorts of things, they would get close to a free ride at the federal level.”
The shift could wind the clock back to a pre-2008 environment, where it was largely left to state officials to prevent consumers from being ripped off by non-bank providers. The CFPB was created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis that was caused by irresponsible lending.
But since then, digital players have made significant inroads by offering banking services via mobile phone apps. Fintechs led by PayPal and Chime had roughly as many new accounts last year as all large and regional banks combined, according to data from Cornerstone Advisors.

“If you’re the big banks, you certainly don’t want a world in which the non-banks have much greater degrees of freedom and much less regulatory oversight than the banks do,” Silberman said.

Keep the exams

The CFPB and its employees are in limbo after acting Director Russell Vought took over last month, issuing a flurry of directives to the agency’s then 1,700 staffers. Working with operatives from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Vought quickly laid off about 200 workers, reportedly took steps to end the agency’s building lease and canceled reams of contracts required for legally-mandated duties.
In internal emails released Friday, CFPB Chief Operating Officer Adam Martinez detailed plans to remove roughly 800 supervision and enforcement workers.
Senior executives at the CFPB shared plans for more layoffs that would leave the agency with just five employees, CNBC has reported. That would kneecap the agency’s ability to carry out its supervision and enforcement duties.
That appears to go beyond what even the Consumer Bankers Association, a frequent CFPB critic, would want. The CBA, which represents the country’s biggest retail banks, has sued the CFPB in the past year to scuttle rules limiting overdraft and credit card late fees. More recently, it noted the CFPB’s role in keeping a level playing field among market participants.
“We believe that new leadership understands the need for examinations for large banks to continue, given the intersections with prudential regulatory examinations,” said Lindsey Johnson, president of the CBA, in a statement provided to CNBC. “Importantly, the CFPB is the sole examiner of non-bank financial institutions.”
Vought’s plans to hobble the agency were halted by a federal judge, who is now considering the merits of a lawsuit brought by a CFPB union asking for a preliminary injunction.
A hearing where Martinez is scheduled to testify is set for Monday.

‘Good luck’

In the meantime, bank executives have gone from antagonists of the CFPB to among those concerned it will disappear.
At a late October bankers convention in New York, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon encouraged his peers to “fight back” against regulators. A few months before that, the bank said that it could sue the CFPB over its investigation into peer-to-peer payments network Zelle.
“We are suing our regulators over and over and over because things are becoming unfair and unjust, and they are hurting companies, a lot of these rules are hurting lower-paid individuals,” Dimon said at the convention.
Now, there’s growing consensus that an initial push to “delete” the CFPB is a mistake. Besides increasing the threat posed from non-banks, current rules from the CFPB would still be on the books, but nobody would be around to update them as the industry evolves.
Small banks and credit unions would be even more disadvantaged than their larger peers if the CFPB were to go away, industry advocates say, since they were never regulated by the agency and would face the same regulatory scrutiny as before.
“The conventional wisdom is not right that banks just want the CFPB to go away, or that banks want regulator consolidation,” said an executive at a major U.S. bank who declined to be identified speaking about the Trump administration. “They want thoughtful policies that will support economic growth and maintain safety and soundness.”
A senior CFPB lawyer who lost his position in recent weeks said that the industry’s alignment with Republicans may have backfired.
“They’re about to live in a world in which the entire non-bank financial services industry is unregulated every day, while they are overseen by the Federal Reserve, FDIC and OCC,” the lawyer said. “It’s a world where Apple, PayPal, Cash App and X run wild for four years. Good luck.” More

“A strong dollar is in our national interest.” The simple message from Robert Rubin, who became treasury secretary in 1994, marked a turning point. For decades, American policymakers had complained about how the weak currencies of their country’s trading partners had made life difficult for domestic manufacturers. Since then, they have either repeated Mr Rubin’s maxim, or avoided discussing the appropriate level for the greenback altogether. More

War and peace are notoriously difficult to price. Just now they are even harder to ignore. Three years ago Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent a wave of disruption through financial markets, yanking up commodity prices, choking off gas supplies and fuelling inflation. As the conflict ground on, that wave dissipated. Now America is attempting to force a resolution to the war, investors must try to gauge the consequences of its success or failure. More

They’re generally reserved for the ultrawealthy and financial institutions.
But the exchange-traded fund industry is looking to give retail investors more access to alternative investments including private credit.

BondBloxx’s Joanna Gallegos thinks it’s a great idea despite the asset class’ reputation for charging high fees and academic research that have shown sluggish returns. Her firm launched the BondBloxx Private Credit CLO ETF (PCMM) about three months ago.
“We don’t believe in the velvet rope. We believe in connecting markets,” the firm’s co-founder and chief operating officer told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “People have not had access to it. It makes sense in a portfolio. People should have access to … a power tool like that in their portfolio.”
The fund invests around 80% of its holdings in private credit collateralized loan obligations, according to the BondBloxx website. Since its Dec. 3 debut, Gallegos’ fund is up 1%.
While the S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq just saw their worst weekly performances since last September, the BondBloxx Private Credit CLO ETF closed virtually flat.

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BondBloxx Private Credit CLO ETF Performance

Gallegos, who’s the former head of global ETF strategy at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, thinks criticism surrounding alternative investment ETFs will fade.

“We heard the same push back [on] high-yield ETFs: ‘Oh, you can’t price that. It’s too expensive,”‘ she said. “Then, the ETF connected that market in a way that allowed investors to participate, [and] drove the prices down in the category in terms of distributed funds.”

‘Most people don’t need it’

But Strategas Securities’ Todd Sohn contends the so-called velvet rope isn’t worth going through. He said skeptical access to alternative investments will provide meaningful benefits to retail investors.
“Most people don’t need it,” the firm’s managing director of ETF and technical strategy said. “If you have a diversified portfolio of five low-cost ETFs, you’re pretty good, right?”

Disclaimer More

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Friday that the central bank can wait to see how President Donald Trump’s aggressive policy actions play out before it moves again on interest rates.
“We do not need to be in a hurry, and are well positioned to wait for greater clarity,” the central bank chief said at a policy forum in New York.

Jerome Powell, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, speaks during the University Of Chicago Booth School Of Business Monetary Policy Forum in New York, US, on Friday, March 7, 2025. 
Yuki Iwamura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

NEW YORK — Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Friday that the central bank can wait to see how President Donald Trump’s aggressive policy actions play out before it moves again on interest rates.
With markets nervous over Trump’s proposals for tariffs and other issues, Powell reiterated statements he and his colleagues have made recently counseling patience on monetary policy amid the high level of uncertainty.

The White House “is in the process of implementing significant policy changes in four distinct areas: trade, immigration, fiscal policy, and regulation,” he said in a speech for the U.S. Monetary Policy Forum. “It is the net effect of these policy changes that will matter for the economy and for the path of monetary policy.”
Noting that “uncertainty around the changes and their likely effects remains high” Powell said the Fed is “focused on separating the signal from the noise as the outlook evolves. We do not need to be in a hurry, and are well positioned to wait for greater clarity.”
The comments seem at least somewhat at odds with growing market expectations for interest rate cuts this year.

As markets have been roiled by Trump’s shifting positions on his agenda — specifically his tariff plans — traders have priced in the equivalent of three quarter percentage point reductions by the end of the year, starting in June, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch gauge.
However, Powell’s comments indicate that the Fed will be in a wait-and-see mode before mapping out further policy easing.

“Policy is not on a preset course,” he said. “Our current policy stance is well positioned to deal with the risks and uncertainties that we face in pursuing both sides of our dual mandate.”
The policy forum is sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Booth School’s Clark Center for Global Markets and included multiple Fed officials in the audience. Most central bank policymakers lately have said they expect the economy to hold up and inflation to fall back to the Fed’s 2% goal, with the rate climate still unclear as Trump’s policy comes more clearly into view.
In his assessment, Powell also spoke in mostly positive terms about the macro environment, saying the U.S. is in “a good place” with a “solid labor market” and inflation moving back to target.
However, he did note that recent sentiment surveys showed misgivings about the path of inflation, largely a product of the Trump tariff talk. The Fed’s preferred gauge showed 12-month inflation running at a 2.5% rate, or 2.6% when excluding food and energy.
“The path to sustainably returning inflation to our target has been bumpy, and we expect that to continue,” Powell said.
Fed Governor Adriana Kugler, who was not at the forum, said in a speech delivered Friday in Portugal that she sees “important upside risks for inflation” and said that “it could be appropriate to continue holding the policy rate at its current level for some time.”
The remarks also came the same day that the Labor Department reported a gain of 151,000 in nonfarm payrolls for February. Though the total was slightly below market expectations, Powell said the report is more evidence that “the labor market is solid and broadly in balance.”
“Wages are growing faster than inflation, and at a more sustainable pace than earlier in the pandemic recovery,” he said.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.3% in February and were up 4% on an annual basis. The jobs report also indicated that the unemployment rate edged higher to 4.1% as household employment dipped.

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Sen. Richard Blumenthal this week pressed Visa for detailed plans and documents related to its deal to provide payments services to Elon Musk’s social media site X.
Blumenthal pointed to Musk’s role in hobbling the CFPB as among the reasons for the request, according to a letter obtained by CNBC.
“Visa stands to take advantage of the deep conflicts of interest and unscrupulous conduct of its new business partner,” Blumenthal wrote.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-CT, speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the January 6th insurrection, in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, March 2, 2021.
Graeme Jennings | Pool via Reuters

Sen. Richard Blumenthal this week pressed Visa for detailed plans and documents related to its deal to provide payments services to Elon Musk’s social media site, X, as it prepares to launch a digital wallet.
Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut and the ranking member of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, pointed to Musk’s role in hobbling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — the consumer watchdog that would be a key regulator of the X Money service — as among the reasons for the information request, according to a March 6 letter obtained by CNBC.

“Given the unique position of X Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Elon Musk as leader of the Department of Government Efficiency and his recent role in gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau … Visa stands to take advantage of the deep conflicts of interest and unscrupulous conduct of its new business partner,” Blumenthal wrote.
The Senate request is one of the first signs of scrutiny on Visa, which runs the world’s largest credit card network, after a late January announcement that it had agreed to power peer-to-peer payments on X. Days after the deal was disclosed, operatives from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency gained access to CFPB data systems, leading to accusations that Musk wanted to kneecap a future regulator and that he could steal trade secrets of competitors to his nascent X Money service.
The letter, addressed to Visa CEO Ryan McInerney, also cast doubts about whether a social media network known for “bots, scams and hate speech” would be able to prevent scams and fraud from proliferating on the site. Musk purchased the site in 2022, when it was known as Twitter.
“These concerns raise questions about X’s ability to protect consumers from fraud and scams as it ventures into the financial sector,” Blumenthal wrote.
“As the largest payment processor in the world, Visa has a legal responsibility to ensure its network is free of financial crime such as scams and fraud, money-laundering, terrorist financing, and more,” he said.

Blumenthal asked for a detailed description of Visa’s plans to enable payments on X, including the business model of the service and Visa’s role in compliance with regulatory requirements around money laundering and illicit remittances.
He also pressed Visa for “all records” related to the deal and communications between X, Visa, DOGE and CFPB personnel.
“We are currently reviewing the letter and will respond appropriately,” a Visa spokesman said in a statement.
A representative for X didn’t immediately have comment. More

A new documentary titled “Tune Out The Noise” brings together some of the academic heavyweights whose work reshaped the financial industry and helped lower costs for all investors.
The film, made by Academy Award-winning documentarian Errol Morris, chronicles the rise of academic finance in the middle of the twentieth century and how it led to a boom in passive investing and to the creation of Dimensional Fund Advisors, which now has more than $700 billion in assets under management.

Morris and David Booth, Dimensional chairman and the namesake of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, spoke to CNBC’s Bob Pisani on Thursday ahead of the film’s New York premier.
“It’s really about how markets work and how different that is from people’s intuition or perception,” Booth told Pisani.
In addition to Booth and some Dimensional executives, the film features interviews with many of the biggest names in financial academia, including Myron Scholes, Robert Merton, Eugene Fama and Kenneth French.
The work of those academics, who have all had roles at Dimensional over the years, helped push the investment world away from traditional stock picking and toward passive, low-cost strategies. That trend extends beyond Dimensional, with firms like Vanguard using those insights to build their own businesses.
“People are getting a much better deal now than when I started in 1971,” Booth said.

Morris’ previous work includes “The Fog of War,” which won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2004, as well as “The Thin Blue Line.”
“One of the reasons I became a filmmaker, or a documentary filmmaker, whatever you want to call it, is I like to hear people telling stories. And this is filled with it,” Morris said of his new film. More

China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi struck a more conciliatory tone on U.S. relations during a high-profile press conference on Friday.
While Wang said the U.S. should not impose “arbitrary tariffs” or return goodwill with hostility, he emphasized that the two countries would both be part of the world for a long time, requiring “peaceful coexistence.”
His comments came shortly after China hit back against U.S. President Donald Trump’s mounting trade tariffs.

Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi speaks during the 2023 Munich Security Conference in Germany on February 18, 2023.
Johannes Simon | Getty Images News | Getty Images

BEIJING — China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi struck a more conciliatory tone on U.S. relations during a high-profile press conference on Friday, in contrast to the ministry’s more aggressive language earlier in the week.
While Wang said the U.S. should not impose “arbitrary tariffs” or return goodwill with hostility, he emphasized that the two countries would both be part of the world for a long time, requiring “peaceful coexistence.”

“Given the extensive common interests and broad space for cooperation, it is fully possible for China and the U.S. to become partners helping each other succeed,” Wang said in Mandarin, via an official translation.
He spent much of the roughly 90-minute press conference talking about China’s efforts to improve relations with other countries and supporting the interests of non-Western nations.
Wang is also director of the office for foreign affairs within the Communist Party of China’s central commission, making him the country’s most senior diplomat. He was speaking to reporters during China’s annual parliamentary meeting, known as the “Two Sessions.”
His comments came shortly after China hit back against U.S. President Donald Trump’s mounting trade tariffs.
“If war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end,” the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. said in a post Wednesday on X.

Tensions between the U.S. and China have escalated in the last several days. Trump earlier this week imposed yet another 10% of tariffs on Chinese goods, to which Beijing retaliated with targeted duties on U.S. agricultural products and restrictions on several U.S. companies.
Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao indicated to reporters Thursday that Beijing was willing to meet with the U.S. for talks on trade.

Russia-Ukraine war

Wang maintained on Friday that Beijing wants to play a constructive role in achieving “lasting peace” in the Russia-Ukraine war, while stating that China’s friendship with Moscow would not change.
Wang advocated for a two-state solution around Gaza and said the current situation only marked halfway progress toward such a resolution.
China’s foreign minister also said “unjustified external suppression” has not stopped Chinese technological development, and cast Beijing as willing to share its tech with other countries rather than keep it to itself.
In a proposed budget released this week for government spending this year, China plans to increase spending on diplomatic endeavors by 8.4% versus a 6.6% increase last year. More