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White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney, the Trump-appointed interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, advocated in a staff-wide memo yesterday to pull back on the agency’s aggressive enforcement approach, declaring an end to the days of “pushing the envelope,” the National Law Journal reported. Saying that he owed staff a clear explanation of how the agency would change under new leadership, Mulvaney told the staff he has no intention of shutting down an agency he harshly criticized as a Republican member of Congress. Mulvaney called for a more restrained enforcement approach, saying that the agency would no longer — in the words of former CFPB Director Richard Cordray — be involved in “pushing the envelope.”

Loans late by 90 days or more are increasingly concentrated in parts of Florida, Georgia and southeast Texas as fallout from the storms continues to weigh on the market, National Mortgage News reported. Florida displaced Mississippi as the state with the biggest percentage of severe delinquencies during the month as a result, according to Black Knight's "First Look" report for December 2017. A total of 726,000 properties were 90 or more days past due, but not yet in foreclosure, last month. Of those, 142,000 are attributed to damage from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. That raises the percentage of severely delinquent loans attributed to the two storms to almost 20 percent from less than 13 percent the previous month. Overall, severe delinquencies were up by 60,000 from November 2017 and 44,000 from December 2016 due to a combination of hurricane-related fallout and seasonal factors.

A bankruptcy judge who slammed Bank of America Corp. for its treatment of a California couple over a foreclosure declined a request to tear up the scathing opinion, saying that it was important "to name and to shame" the company in order to shed light on practices that affect consumers, Bloomberg News reported. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein blasted Bank of America in a ruling in March for its "heartless" conduct against the couple, Erik and Renee Sundquist, and awarded more than $45 million in damages. The bank agreed to pay the Sundquists several million dollars more than the $6 million they won at trial if Judge Klein’s opinion was expunged. “This was a naked effort to coerce this court to erase the record,” Klein wrote in a Thursday opinion. “No chance. No dice.” Although the judge agreed to vacate the damages, he said "trials have consequences" and the litigation is no longer a two-party dispute. Nonprofit consumer advocacy groups and law schools that had intervened in the case on behalf of the public had a "potent point" when they noted that the bank "has shown no remorse, made no apology and promised no reform of the corporate culture practices illustrated by this case," Judge Klein said. Read more. 

Read further analysis of Judge Klein’s ruling in today’s Rochelle’s Daily Wire. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will "reconsider" its rule regulating the payday lending industry, the agency said yesterday, raising the prospect that the Trump administration will scale back or reverse the regulations put into place by former director and Obama appointee Richard Cordray, the Washington Examiner reported. "The bureau intends to engage in a rulemaking process so that the bureau may reconsider the payday rule," the agency, now run on an acting basis by Trump appointee Mick Mulvaney, said in a brief statement, noting that the rule's effective date of implementation was yesterday. Under Cordray, the agency finalized the rule in October. Cordray left the bureau in November and has launched a campaign for the Ohio governorship as a Democrat. Read more.

In related news, the fight over leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is far from over as the case again heads to court, Housing Wire reported. Last week, a federal judge ruled that President Trump has the authority to name the acting director of the CFPB. This was the second ruling in two months, both leaving CFPB Acting Director Mick Mulvaney in leadership. Back in November, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, who was appointed by Trump, ruled in favor of the Trump administration. While Trump has won every battle over the position in the courts so far, English continues to fight back. Just two days after a judge once again sided with Mulvaney, English filed an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She also requested an expedited review of her case. Read more.

David Cassidy‘s estate is being sued by multiple Florida lawyers who claim the late actor owes them money, People has reported. Cassidy’s trustee and personal representative of his estate recently filed paperwork objecting to two claims: One filed by law firm Rodier & Rodier, and one filed by lawyer Damaso W. Saavedra. Rodier & Rodier claims Cassidy owes $102,834 for legal services, and Saavedra claims he owes $19,006.02. Rodier & Rodier reportedly sued Cassidy in 2013, but his 2015 chapter 11 bankruptcy filing put their pending lawsuit on hold. According to The Blast, his bankruptcy was dismissed, but his debt was not discharged.