“Here we are, a week away from Thanksgiving, and I’m in Kansas City. My family told me to stop telling Thanksgiving jokes, but I said I couldn’t quit cold turkey.” The CFPB isn’t going away “cold turkey” but yesterday’s personnel move was a reminder that there are clever people in Washington DC. It was a follow up to Trump Administration court filings last week that said the CFPB was on track to run out of money to operate at the beginning of next year and argued that it was legally prohibited from seeking an infusion of funding from the Federal Reserve, which is the bureau’s primary source of funding. Yesterday Donald Trump nominated Stuart Levenbach, a name you can forget as he is merely a placeholder, to be the permanent head of the CFPB. He’s a top aide to White House budget director Russ Vought. A CFPB spokesperson said the nomination was a “technical” maneuver intended to extend Vought’s ability to continue serving as the acting director of the agency without needing Senate confirmation, i.e., the move is designed to empower Vought to continue leading the agency as he moves to shut it down in the coming months. (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s are sponsored by Figure. Figure is shaking up the lending world with their five-day HELOC, offering borrower approvals in as little as five minutes and funding in five days. And, embedding their technology is easy. Hear an interview with Figure’s Michael Tannenbaum on how small-balance first-liens and HELOC-as-refi strategies work, the latest developments after the company’s IPO, and his thoughts on the current lending climate.)