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Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who is set to play a key role in the incoming Trump administration, has called for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to be scrapped.
“Delete CFPB,” Musk said in an X post on Wednesday (November 27). “There are too many duplicative federal agencies.”
Musk entered the debate on the CFPB following an appearance by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen on the Joe Rogan podcast.
Andreessen, co-founder and general partner of a16z, alleged that the CFPB is “terrorising” Americans by interfering in the financial sector.
He also described the CFPB as the "personal agency" of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, who he said has taken control of it.
Andreessen complained about what he calls Operation Choke Point 2.0, a pattern of politicised interference and discrimination in the financial sector, including the denial of banking services to certain groups and individuals.
“It’s hit the tech world hard,” said Andreessen. “We’ve had like 30 founders debanked in the last four years. It’s been a recurring pattern and this is one of the reasons we ended up supporting Trump.”
He noted that the fintech and crypto sectors have been particularly affected, with "no due process" and no means to appeal against a debanking decision.
The original Operation Choke Point, launched in 2013, was a Department of Justice-led initiative to impose greater oversight on firms thought to pose a high risk of fraud and money laundering, such as firearms dealers and payday lenders.
Jarod Facundo, journalist at corporate investigations news site The Capitol Forum, also joined the conversation on X.
Facundo was discussing the debanking of political and religious groups and their members, and the CFPB’s lack of authority to intervene.
He cited one example, which came to light during litigation earlier this year, where the CFPB was unable to investigate the potential debanking of Christians, despite having grounds to believe that discrimination had taken place.
Andreessen sees the CFPB as an agency that practices selective intervention against unfavoured targets. He complained, for example, that the CFPB had shut down LendUp Loans, a fintech backed by Andreessen's firm, in 2021, and forced it to return almost $40m to customers.
Musk’s role under President Trump
Following Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, Musk has been awarded a role as co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Coined by Musk himself, the DOGE is not an official government department, but it will act as a kind of focus group for reducing government spending.
Musk has said the mission of the DOGE is to help “cut the federal government down to size”, and he is aiming to slash up to $2trn, or about 30 percent, of the federal budget.
In the case of the CFPB, however, the agency could not be shut down without Congressional approval, which is unlikely to be obtainable, even from a Republican-led Congress.
