Cordray Sarcastically Slaps CFPB Critics Impacted by Equifax Breach

Sep 15, 2017

Richard Cordray, who rarely acknowledged criticism of his leadership skills when he was Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), launched into an epic Twitter rant

The Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) took a sharp jab at his agency’s detractors by claiming many of them were impacted by last week’s announcement of a data security breach at Equifax, adding that the breach should make them rethink the value of the CFPB’s mission.

In an interview yesterday with NPR, CFPB Director Richard Cordray described the Equifax data that was compromised in the breach as “some of the crown jewels of our personal information, the kind of information we spend all day long, every day of our lives trying to safeguard and keep from people we don't want to have it.”

While Cordray called the breach “Equifax's failure,” he took an unexpected sarcastic slam at some of the people who were effected in this matter.

“Well, I think some of the critics of the Consumer Bureau are among the 143 million people who've now had their precious financial information compromised and are going to have to worry about what it means for them and their families,” he said. “And I would like to think that that will lead them to think again about the importance of having an agency there to protect them and to look out for these kinds of problems and to hold these companies accountable for making these kind of errors and mistakes.”

However, Cordray failed to identify specific actions that the CFPB is doing to mitigate the data breach. “There's an array of issues that we're looking into,” he said. “They all need to be fixed, and there needs to be close attention to this. And we're making sure that that's happening.”

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Phil Hall

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Sep 15, 2017

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