Book hotel rooms and these bank fees add up to tens of billions of dollars that drain money from a family budgets I know you're asking for input you want public comment on this people to weigh in and describe what their most egregious junk fees are I just wonder what comes next Is that going to be followed by fines or other enforcement action against banks Well in some cases we're going to look at rules The CFPB is a part of the Federal Reserve system We now administer a lot of the rules that we took over From our partners at the fed they relate to bank accounts credit cards and so many other products But you're right enforcement may be part of this too If companies are colluding if banks are engaged in practices to manipulate how they can harvest more fees sometimes that breaks the law and they'll have to face a liability for that How about crypto Traders face some pretty hefty fees in the crypto world I wonder if the CFPB plans to go there is crypto in your portfolio Well you know we're want to hear from everybody in terms of all the products that they're dealing with It's our authorities going to depend on the specific facts but as more and more people are transferring money whether it's peer to peer payments crypto or anything else We want to hear about the churn and the fees that they're incurring In some cases those fees may be way out of line with the actual cost or the service that they're getting What does this mean for the CFPB at this stage of the game as part of the Biden administration Are you looking at a more aggressive posture in dealing with this type of thing than what we saw for instance in the Trump administration Well look our job is to enforce the law and that's what I am going to do We want to make sure markets are competitive President Biden convened many agency heads and cabinet members And we talked about all we need to do to attack the lack of competition including in the financial sector where a handful of giants often dominate certain markets So at the end of the day we want to make sure that the more we have competition the more that prices are lower that people have more choices that we get more innovation And that's going to be top of mind for us at the CFP Is this a big conversation about inflation in disguise here Is that what we're really talking about I know the administration is found a number of ways to get to inflation It's a very narrow focused effort Is this one of them Well I see this as a long-standing problem When you go to the supermarket you can see when prices are going up When you buy things online some people can feel when prices are changing A lot of times in banking these fees are on the back end It's advertised as free or low fee but in reality people get penalized and many financial institutions make big money on this fee creep that we're seeing And ultimately the more we can make it clearer and competitive some of those fees might go away Some banks are already announcing they're getting rid of overdraft fees and NSF fees And I think we're going to see more of that Director you were once the agency's student loan ombudsman so you know a bit about this I wonder why does the Biden administration continue to resist calls to forgive student loan debt from the likes of senator Elizabeth Warren and other progressives Well you know that's really a decision for the education department for the CFPB They see PBs enforcement action have canceled debt especially when it's been illegally or legally originated We'll wait for a decision I am definitely worried about the return to repayment which is going to start in a few months We need to make sure that borrowers who have been cheated or borrowers who know their rights And I think we're all waiting for a decision on what might happen when it comes to student loan Thanks to CFPB director Rohit Chopra coming up what went wrong With the rollout of 5G I'll ask former FCC chair ajit pai coming up next You're listening to balance of power on Bloomberg radio This is Bloomberg You come into bed Hun Yep honey I'll be right there I just gotta turn out the light Ow.