On October 12, Karen Webster, CEO of Market Platform Dynamics, published an article entitled “Does the CFPB Really Help Consumers?” on pymnts.com. First, the article notes that the Who’s Who of the financial services and payments industries have been deemed by the CFPB to be “lawbreakers,” including JP Morgan Chase, Discover, American Express, Western Union, PayPal, Sprint, GE Capital, Regions Bank, and Honda. Then the article notes that pending at the CFPB are proposals to limit payday loans and arbitration clauses, as well as efforts to limit the payment of referral fees for mortgage loan lead generation. She then notes that the CFPB was the brainchild of then Harvard Bankruptcy Law professor Elizabeth Warren who argued that we needed such an agency to ensure that “ordinary people were dealt with fairly.” She characterizes as a “modern-day public stockade” the CFPB’s periodic listing of the firms about which they have received the most unverified complaints. She then suggests that the CFPB targets firms that try to serve the underserved. She mentions the CFPB’s pending proposal to regulate prepaid cards, a service upon which many poorer people depend, as lending products, something sure to reduce their availability. That will hurt poorer consumers, who will also be hurt when the CFPB’s proposal to regulate payday lending drives most payday lenders out of business. The disappearance of payday lenders, she predicts, will push their desperate customers to pawn shops, loan sharks, and possibly even crime, this despite the fact that there are software solutions used by 16 states to keep good payday lenders in compliance and protect consumers. She then adds that the CFPB’s proposal to eliminate arbitration clauses that impede class actions, while benefitting plaintiffs’ attorneys, will likely cause credit card issuers to raise their credit standards, again hurting poorer people. Finally she mentioned the competition-reducing effect that the CFPB’s remittance transfer rule has had on the ability of poorer people to send funds abroad as banks have gotten out of the business to avoid the rule.