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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will team up with the Federal Trade Commission to police debt collectors as it shifts to a gentler form of enforcement under the Trump administration, the Wall Street Journal reported. CFPB Acting Director Mick Mulvaney announced the change Tuesday. Mulvaney, the White House budget director and a longtime critic of the CFPB, is revamping enforcement policy at the bureau. The CFPB’s aggressive stance under its previous Obama-appointed leadership had often caused friction with financial companies. Some Republican critics of the CFPB have called for shrinking the bureau sharply and merging its enforcement authority into the FTC’s, pointing to overlap in the two agencies’ mandates. Consumer groups and Democrats have advocated for strong independence for the CFPB, saying the FTC has few tools to regulate nonbanks, such as mortgage lenders, payday lenders and debt collectors. Mulvaney has said that he sees debt collection as an enforcement priority because the CFPB gets many consumer complaints about that industry, even as the bureau begins to ease its grips on other sectors such as payday lending.

A group of consumer bankruptcy experts have given a wish list of changes they would make to bankruptcy law’s rules on student loans to another group of experts who could take those changes to Congress later this year, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Bankruptcy lawyers, trustees and other experts who are part of the American Bankruptcy Institute’s Consumer Bankruptcy Committee declared it “time to explore options for dealing successfully with student loan debt in bankruptcy” in a nine-page memo that lays out their frustrations with existing laws. The group of more than 800 ABI members called for Congress to implement several changes, including giving borrowers the power to cancel private loans and creating mediation programs. “We have all seen the effects of burdensome student loans,” committee officials said in the memo. “While we cannot do much about the root causes of skyrocketing education costs and diminishing public support for institutions of higher learning, we can try to suggest ways in which the bankruptcy process can aid the honest, but unfortunate student loan debtor.” The wish list was released to a panel of law professors, federal judges and consumer advocates that formed last year to examine the problems that have arisen within the U.S. consumer bankruptcy system since 1978, the year of the law’s last major overhaul. The Commission on Consumer Bankruptcy, which is also led by the nonpartisan American Bankruptcy Institute, is expected to release a report in December with recommendations on how to fix the problems.

Actor Joey Lawrence and his wife have filed for bankruptcy after plummeting into debt, AOL.com reported. After the cancellation of "Melissa and Joey," Lawrence's income plummeted: He made $534,000 in 2015 but only $58,000 the following year. He claims he currently has $60 in cash and $8,000 in the bank. The actor reportedly earns between $4,000 and $6,000 a month — a stark contrast from the $500,000 salary he made while employed by ABC Family (now Freeform). The network canceled "Melissa & Joey," which co-starred Melissa Joan Hart, in 2015 after five seasons.

A Senate banking bill that is designed to roll back rules made after the 2008 financial crisis would extend a helping hand to struggling student loan borrowers. On Thursday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) introduced an amendment to the bill that would give people who have taken out private student loans the power to cancel that debt if they file for bankruptcy protection, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The amount of private student loan debt currently stands at $165 billion, he said. The Democratic Whip’s amendment would eliminate the 2005 rule that made canceling private student loans very difficult, even for borrowers who face extreme financial problems. In a speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Durbin told his colleagues that bankruptcy judges have the power to cancel loans borrowed for homes, boats and other property. Their power, however, stops at student loans, he said. The measure has support from several Senate colleagues, including Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).