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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the only federal agency out to protect the financial interests American consumers. Naturally, big banks and moneyed interests want to shut it down. A new campaign says, “Not without a fight.”

If any good came out of the financial crisis, it was the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the agency is responsible for protecting consumers by making more effective rules for the financial sector and enforcing those rules. Its jurisdiction includes banks, credit unions, securities firms, payday lenders, mortgage-servicing operations, foreclosure relief services, debt collectors and other financial companies.

Republicans and Wall Street’s friends in Congress fought against the agency’s launch, and then fought to keep Warren, at the time a Harvard professor, from becoming its director. (Now Warren is in the Senate, delivering delicious smackdowns to bankers and regulators who played key roles in the 2008 financial crisis.)

[fve]https://youtu.be/1V0Ax9OIc84[/fve]

Since its inception, the CFPB has returned over $11 billion to consumers wronged by financial predators. Naturally, Wall Street wants to shut it down. The latest attempt is a Koch brothers-backed Astroturf group innocuously named “Protect America’s Consumers,” so lame that it actually used a quote from CFPB supporter Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) in an anti-CFPB video.

[fve]https://youtu.be/rnvSKHHUDGo[/fve]

This deceptive tactic may have worked in the past, but a new campaign is determined not to let Wall Street interests get away with it this time. At midnight, American Family Voices launched “Protect Consumers From Protect America’s Consumers.”

The website features a handy consumer guide to recognizing the shady industry-backed organization. The organization also launched a #SaveCFPB tweet storm today during a Senate hearing on the CFPB that was aimed at stopping the agency from taking on the payday loan industry.

Check out “Protect Consumers from Protect America’s Consumers,” to learn how to recognize shady Astroturf groups, and join the fight to #SaveCFPB.

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