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U.S. consumer borrowing rose in October, according to new data from the Federal Reserve, Dow Jones Newswires reported. Outstanding consumer credit, a measure of non-real estate debt, rose by $20.52 billion in October from the prior month, climbing at a 6.51 percent seasonally adjusted annual rate, the Fed said yesterday. Total outstanding credit increased a revised $19.21 billion in September. Revolving credit outstanding, mostly credit cards, increased at a 9.9 percent annual pace in October. Nonrevolving credit outstanding, mainly student and auto loans, rose at a 5.3 percent annual pace. Household debt totaled $12.955 trillion in the third quarter, up 0.9 percent from the spring, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said last month. That was the most on record, though the figure wasn't adjusted for inflation.

A federal judge yesterday refused to undo the Trump administration’s designation of Mick Mulvaney as the interim leader of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, rejecting an argument that the White House unlawfully sidestepped the appointment of another lawyer from within the Obama-era agency, the National Law Journal reported. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly in Washington, ruling from the bench, declined to grant a restraining order that the agency’s deputy director, Leandra English, requested Sunday night in a lawsuit in Washington federal district court. Before resigning as CFPB director last week, Richard Cordray promoted English, then his chief of staff, to the deputy role in an attempt to put her in control of the agency as the Trump administration moved to nominate a permanent, Senate-confirmed leader.

The Trump administration is reaching out to the country’s biggest finance and tech companies for help in managing the government’s $1.3 trillion student-loan program, the Wall Street Journal reported. The meetings are part of an overhaul of one of the nation’s biggest consumer-loan portfolios, undertaken by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and A. Wayne Johnson, the Education Department’s chief operating officer of federal student aid. The program, which is the main source of financing for American college and graduate students, has suffered from years of customer-service complaints, shaky accounting, rising costs and a high level of borrower defaults. The government’s current contracts with student-loan servicers, the contractors that deal directly with borrowers on the government’s behalf, expire in 2019. Johnson said that he’s not satisfied with the current service and wants to look beyond traditional higher-education-related companies to administer the program. Johnson, appointed in June, said in an interview that he has met with several dozen companies to solicit ideas on how to improve the program and gauge their interest in submitting bids. The companies include Wall Street titans Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., credit-card companies Visa. Inc. and American Express Co., and tech giant Amazon.com Inc., he said.

Workers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau arrived at the office yesterday to find two acting directors asserting dueling authority and facing off over the direction of one of the nation’s financial watchdogs, the Wall Street Journal reported. The acting director appointed by the Trump administration, Mick Mulvaney, arrived a little before 7:30 Monday morning with two aides and a bag of doughnuts to work in the director’s office across the street from the White House complex. The office had been vacated on Friday by the departure of former Director Richard Cordray. Mulvaney later outlined his immediate plans to change how the bureau operates, including putting in place a 30-day freeze on the issuance of new rules and hiring. Mulvaney, who also is director of the administration’s Office of Management and Budget and is well known as a CFPB critic, introduced himself to the 1,600-member staff with a memo asking them to disregard communications from Leandra English. English, the bureau’s deputy director and Cordray’s pick as acting director, issued a legal challenge on Sunday in an effort to block Mulvaney and establish herself in the post. A new director is ultimately expected to be nominated by the administration and then face Senate confirmation.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said yesterday that it had ordered Citibank to pay $6.5 million for allegedly harming borrowers with student loan servicing failures, Reuters reported. The agency said it ordered Citibank to end illegal loan practices and pay $3.75 million in redress to consumers and a $2.75 million civil penalty. Student debt can carry tax benefits, but Citi failed to guide customers through paperwork that could lead to tax savings, according to the agency. Some clients were also made to pay late fees and interest when they were eligible to defer such loan payments, said the agency.

Few people realize that the loans they take out to pay for their education could eventually derail their careers, according to a New York Times analysis on Saturday. But in 19 states, government agencies can seize state-issued professional licenses from residents who default on their educational debts. Another state, South Dakota, suspends driver’s licenses, making it nearly impossible for people to get to work. As debt levels rise, creditors are taking increasingly tough actions to chase people who fall behind on student loans. Going after professional licenses stands out as especially punitive. Determining the number of people who have lost their licenses is impossible because many state agencies and licensing boards don’t track the information. Public records requests by the New York Times identified at least 8,700 cases in which licenses were taken away or put at risk of suspension in recent years, although that tally almost certainly understates the true number.