The Politics of Debt

Last month we posted an article on Facebook about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The article, I think it was from the Washington Post, was a simple, concise recitation of the many hurdles the CFPB has been facing over the last year or so. It talked about their actions against Wells Fargo and the fact they have not pursued a single matter in the the last year. Moribund under it’s new director, was how the article put it, I think.

It was a straightforward article, it reported that the CFPB wasn’t working and speculated on whether or not it had a future.

We posted it with a heading wondering about the future of CFPB an the effect that could have on clients and law firms that do what I do. Short and sweet, the caption on that came with the link said it all, or so I thought. I should note that we’ve posted about the CFPB in the past and always received thoughtful, insightful comments.

As we began to with this post. Then, it was shared.by at least 6 of our followers (thank you!). Then some of the people it was shared to shared it as well. Which was all great … until about three days in.

That’s when we started getting vile comments. Really nasty stuff. For a while we erased the offensive comments and banned their ‘authors’ from the page. But, it got to be too much and we had to drop the post from Facebook. That’s why we can’t show an image of it here.

The comments, some remarkably, if not terribly creatively profane, revolved around the very invocation of Elizabeth Warren’s name, though a few went deeper into the ‘libtards’ plot to destroy banking and Wall Street.

Here’s the thing: before we erased, blocked, and banned we checked out each offender’s home Facebook page. It’s stunning, by the way, how many people ignore Facebook’s privacy settings and leave everything out there for anyone.

There was not a banker, broker, arbitrager, Axe Capital employee, investment banker, mortgage company exec, wolf of wall street, master of the universe, or even one of their lawyers in the lot of them. They were all regular people – a few retired state employees, a couple of people on disability, a mechanic, a teacher, and the like. They had very little in common other than having time to comment on a Facebook post from a law firm in Connecticut and despising, violently, the CFPB.

Okay, they had one more thing in common – they were the exact same demographic that Wells Fargo targeted in their schemes over the last few years. The schemes the CFPB identified, punished, shut down.

Here’s another thing: I deal in debt and foreclosure every day and I can attest to the fact that debt – personal debt – has nothing to do with anyone’s political affiliation. it has a lot to do with sudden unemployment, unforeseen death, divorce, illness, and a dozen other out-of-the-blue-soul-and-financial-crushing events very few people have  a (or can) plan for.

Politicians and lobbyists can divide along ideological lines and fight things like the CFPB out in Congress and in the airwaves of public opinion. But when someone, a regular someone, is blindsided by, well, life, and is facing losing their home (and more), there are no ideological lines.

There’s just trying to fix it.