The challenge is that this doesn’t take into account harm prevented. How many companies changed their policies as a result of CFPB enforcement / to avoid CFPB involvement?
Based on the hijinks we have still been seeing day to day, I am not sure I think the CFPB has been scaring companies into good behavior on any significant scale. I am sure there's some, but I think the penalties are clearly too low if half of the recovery amount is operational costs for the CFPB itself.
Anecdotally, I work for a very large tech company and the CFPB is mentioned frequently as an important regulator. It has (had) an outsized impact where it regulated and definitely caused companies to change their behavior or at least be more continuous.
> based on murders we have still been seeing day to day, I’m not sure prosecutors have been scaring criminals into good behavior on any significant scale.
If the benchmark is perfection, no one can meet that standard. On top of the 20B in recovered consumer relief, they’ve levied another 5B in fines. It’s also important to look at their progress [1] where they’ve taken > 350 enforcement actions since they started. They were on track to be quite successful at enforcement actions until Trump’s first term when he started trying to cripple them. Same with penalty relief btw. Most of the dollars returned were under Democratic presidents.
No agency within the government can do well when the administration is purposefully trying to cripple you in the first place.
