N.Y. Times Quotes Professor Sarkar About Gutted Consumer Watchdog Bureau

Professor Shayak Sarkar spoke to the New York Times on Feb. 9 about actions by Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Acting Director Russell Vought to severely weaken the bureau.

Soon after his appointments as Office of Management and Budget director and as CFPB lead, Project 2025 coauthor Vought ordered bureau employees to stop nearly all work, announced plans to cut most funding and closed the bureau’s headquarters. 

One of Wall Street’s most powerful regulators, the bureau has been the subject of harsh criticism from banks and Republican lawmakers since its creation in 2011 in response to the housing crisis that sparked the Great Recession.

"It’s striking to me that people’s economic dissatisfaction created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and people’s economic dissatisfaction created Trump,” Sarkar told the Times. 

Sarkar pointed out that the second Trump administration has attacked specific agencies that serve vulnerable populations, like the consumer bureau and USAID, while offering “a lot of federal support and cheering” for agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has heightened immigration crackdowns.

Shayak Sarkar's scholarship addresses the structure and legal regulation of inequality. His substantive interests lie in financial regulation, employment law, immigration, and taxation.