US President Donald Trump on Friday appointed White House Office of Management and BudgetDirector Mick Mulvaney to head a financial watchdog that the administration has sought to overhaul as part of its deregulation push.
Mulvaney, who described the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a “sick, sad joke” in a 2014 interview, is to serve as acting director until a permanent head is nominated and confirmed, the White House said in a statement.
Former bureau director Richard Cordray, who had long been in the banking industry’s crosshairs, last week announced he would step down by the end of the month, several months early.
The Trump administration’s decision to appoint Mulvaney sparked some confusion over interim leadership, as Cordray had already named Leandra English — who was already part of the agency — as his de facto successor by naming her deputy director.
That move came hours before Trump tapped Mulvaney as the regulator’s temporary leader.
Since the start of his presidency, Trump has decried financial rules and regulations, put in place through the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to combat the excesses that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
The US Department of the Treasury under Trump has produced three reports calling for a whittling down of rules imposed on mid-size banks, a scaling back of stress tests and a restructuring of the bureau.
US Republicans have long deemed the bureau, founded in 2011 under the administration of then-US president Barack Obama, too far outside political control.
Last month, the US Senate voted to terminate a rule created by the agency that would have allowed class-action suits against banks or credit card companies.
The rule would have addressed fine-print clauses that bank and credit card consumers must agree to, which bar them from seeking redress through litigation.
The vote was criticized by many US Democrats as a sop to Wall Street.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day