Simon Johnson says the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has actually been doing a good job up until now of, well, protecting consumer finances.

The CFPB was established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-reform legislation to do exactly what its name implies: protect consumers in their various financial transactions. A new agency was needed because existing regulators, including the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, had manifestly and repeatedly failed to protect consumers from abuses, such as deceptive and fraudulent mortgage-lending practices, some of which were at the heart of what went wrong in 2007-08.

As Elizabeth Warren (then a consumer advocate, now a US senator from Massachusetts) powerfully pointed out, there was a lot more protection for people buying toasters than for someone taking out a 25-year mortgage. Finance is complex, and a lot of devils could be, and were, hidden in the details. The CFPB was designed, above all, to bring greater transparency to consumers’ financial transactions – actually a very pro-market contribution.

And the CFPB has done exactly what Congress designed it to do. So far, the Bureau has arranged for the return of almost $12 billion to 29 million consumers. At the same time, banks are reporting record profits – on the order of $171 billion, according to the latest data. The CFPB is good for business, or at least for the straightforward, transparent business of traditional lending.

Unfortunately, all this seems likely to end as Trump has appointed someone to head the agency who is actually against the agency’s existence, not unlike his approach to the environment, housing, and education. Johnson seems to think the public will catch on to this and punish the Republicans politically when the little guy starts to get hurt by it. I don’t know, it probably depends on the timing. Nobody wants to see another financial blow-up, but if it has to happen mid-2020 seems as good a time as any.