John Oliver—MONEY's Champion of the Year 2016 —has emphasized repeatedly that he is not a journalist. But with exhaustive research and fact-checking, his shows have provided deep dives into wonky money-related topics, illuminating some of the worst practices of the financial industry. 
 
 Here are a few of his most scathing comments: 
 
 On Credit Reports (April): 5.1 million YouTube views 
 
 “Just one error on your credit report, and suddenly the world treats you like a mean girl treats the high school debate team: ‘You’re nothing, Amberly, you don’t even exist.’" 
 
 On Debt Buyers (June): 7.8 million YouTube views 
 
 “It is pretty clear by now that buying debt is a grimy business and badly needs more oversight. Because, as it stands, any idiot can get into it, and I can prove that to you because I’m an idiot and we started a debt-buying company.” 
 
 On Retirement Plans (June): 5.2 million YouTube views 
 
 “Financial analyst, financial advisor,financial consultant, financial planner, investment consultants,and wealth manager are generic terms or job titles and may be used by investment professionals who may not hold any specific credential. So ‘financial analyst’ is just a fancy term that doesn’t actually mean anything, like the ‘John Oliver effect.’” 
 
 On Auto Lending (August): 6.3 million YouTube views 
 
 “There’s a surprising amount of competition to give car loans to people with poor credit, so much so that people who have recently declared bankruptcy are being actively targeted through the mail.” 
 
 Photograph by Chris Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty Images Brad Katsuyama Invented a fairer stock market. If Brad Katsuyama gets his way, it will no longer be possible for a handful of professional investors to get an early peek at the trading of other market players. They won’t be able to jump in and fill orders at less-than-perfect prices -- and pocket the difference. His brainchild is a new stock exchange called the Investors Exchange, or IEX. If it succeeds, IEX will be a less expensive way for large traders like mutual funds to buy and sell stocks on behalf of ordinary investors. “Cheaper trades boost investment returns,” explains Joe Brennan, head of the equity index group at fund giant Vanguard, which has been complaining about high-speed trading abuses for years. At issue is so-called high-frequency trading, a strategy that uses powerful computers to rapidly buy and sell stocks, often looking to gain advantage over competitors by mere fractions of a second. Katsuyama’s IEX battles back by slowing down trading by 350-millionths of a second—a “speed bump” so small that humans don’t notice, but that eliminates high-frequency traders’ edge. 
 
 Photograph by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters Phyllis Borzi Got us the fiduciary rule. After nearly a decade of trying, the U.S. Department of Labor finally got it done: a rule that will require financial advisers to act in their clients’ best interests when managing retirement assets—in other words, to act as fiduciaries. That rule is set to go into effect next year in large part because of Phyllis Borzi, who jump-started the campaign when she joined the department as assistant secretary of labor for employee benefits security in 2009. The fiduciary standard is aimed at financial pros who push expensive or risky investments that pay them high commissions but aren’t necessarily the best choice for their clients. They are allowed to do this under a standard that requires only that investment recommendations be “roughly suitable.” According to a 2015 White House Council of Economic Advisers report, the resulting conflicted advice costs savers, on average, 1% a year in returns, or $17 billion. The Labor Department was forced to withdraw its initial proposal in the face of fierce industry and congressional opposition, but Borzi refused to give up. She formed alliances with consumer groups, brought industry executives to the table, and convinced the White House to use its bully pulpit on the issue. “Phyllis Borzi was the linchpin,” says Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America. “It would not have happened without her.” 
 
 Photograph by Shayla Hunter Charles Ellis Convinced us to index. For investors, 2016 was the year of the index fund. Some $175 billion was yanked from actively managed funds, while $326 billion was stashed in passive ones. This shift came about in large part because of the ideas of investment consultant and author Charles Ellis—whose new book, The Index Revolution, sums up the case he’s been making for decades. Back in 1975, Ellis wrote an article arguing that investors would come out ahead by simply avoiding mistakes rather than seeking to beat the market. Forty years of data have proved him to be prophetic. Central to Ellis’s case is the huge impact of investment costs. “It’s easy to ignore a 1% fee if you’re earning 15% returns,” says Ellis. “But today you’re lucky to get 7%, which means a 1% fee takes nearly 15% of your returns.” In today’s world of low returns, that’s a message that has never been more urgent. 
 
 Eleanor Holmes Norton (top). Pat Jehlen (at bottom, at left in blue jacket) at the signing of the Massachusetts equal pay law. Photographs by (Holmes Norton) Paul Sancya/AP Photo; (Jehlen) Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images Pat Jehlen and Eleanor Holmes Norton Battled the pay gap. The gender wage gap remains stubbornly persistent. But in 2016 two lawmakers made tangible progress in the slow-going battle to ensure equal pay for equal work. The first is Massachusetts State Sen. Pat Jehlen, who pushed a comprehensive equal pay law through the commonwealth’s legislature this summer. The law includes incentives for businesses to tackle gender pay imbalances and clear standards for making sure workers get “comparable pay for comparable work.” as state law has long required. But perhaps most important, the law bars Massachusetts employers from asking for an applicant’s salary history before extending a job offer. Advocates believe that prohibition will break the cycle by which one discriminatory wage leads inevitably to the next. Several states are modeling their own bills on the law, and New York City implemented a similar rule for city agencies in November. And on a national level it inspired the legendary congresswoman and equal rights leader Eleanor Holmes Norton to introduce the federal Pay Equity for All Act in the U.S. Congress in September. If passed, it would bar employers from asking about previous salaries nationwide. 
 
 Photograph by Joe Raedle/Getty Images EpiPen Parents Beat back Big Pharma. Outraged parents unleashed their fury on pharmaceutical maker Mylan this year for “unconscionable price gouging” on a product that their children literally could die without—leading to a congressional hearing, $500 million in penalties, and annual savings in the thousands. Mylan owns the EpiPen, a device that wards off life-threatening anaphylactic shock during allergic reactions. Families tend to restock EpiPens, which expire annually, during back-to-school season. It was then that many realized that their high-deductible insurance plans left them on the hook for the full retail price—over $600 per pack, up from less than $100 when Mylan acquired the product in 2007. Families need multiple packs (one each for school, home, and to carry around), so bills hit the thousands. Parents swarmed Mylan’s Facebook page, assailing the price increases, and wrote to politicians demanding action. Hundreds of thousands signed online petitions pleading for sensible pricing; allergy advocacy blogs were filled with heartbreaking personal stories. Months of bad publicity prodded Mylan into releasing coupons for bigger EpiPen discounts and launching a cheaper generic version. The uproar also led to federal probes, revealing Mylan has overcharged the Pentagon and Medicare for EpiPens to the tune of $500 million. 
 
 Photograph by Michael Hickey/Getty Images Mitch Daniels Tackled college debt. Starting this fall, the Purdue Research Foundation is paying tuition for more than 100 students—who, in return, agree to pay a portion of their future earnings. It’s the biggest program of its kind in the country. Purdue president Mitch Daniels, a two-term Republican governor of Indiana who joined the school in 2013, based his Back-a-Boiler program on an idea for income-share agreements (ISAs) proposed by economist Milton Friedman in 1955. But he’s been careful to avoid some pitfalls that sank previous ISAs; for example, he limits the term to nine years, so students aren’t doomed to a lifetime of payments. The experiment is winning bipartisan praise from education experts. And ISAs are just part of Daniels’ strategy at Purdue. He also cut room and board prices and froze tuition for in-state residents for the past three years. 
 
 Courtesy of Chase The Chase Sapphire Reserve Card So many people applied for a Sapphire Reserve card within days of its August launch that Chase literally ran out of the metallic card blanks and had to send temporary plastic ones instead. Why the stampede? The rewards are far better than any other card: three points per dollar spent on restaurants and travel, one point on everything else, and a 100,000-point sign-up bonus if users spend $4,000 within three months. Even the hefty $450 annual fee is mitigated by $300 worth of credits. But perks only partly explain the card’s blockbuster appeal: Customers flooded social media with “unboxing” videos of opening their cards for the first time. Hoping to inspire similar passion, Citi and AmEx boosted their sign-up bonuses and point structures. The Reward Wars rage on. 
 
 (c) Tony Garcia Vanguard Personal Advisor Services So-called robo-advisors—algorithms that pick investments based on your financial goals and risk tolerance—are all the rage, providing new competition for traditional (that is, human) financial planners. Fund giant Vanguard has steered a middle path. Its Personal Advisor Services—open to investors with $50,000—pairs computer-driven investing with an advisor you talk to over the phone. It grew into a juggernaut in 2016, reaching $46 billion in assets under management. It’s not hard to see why. At 0.3% of assets per year, fees are competitive with fully automated options. “Now someone with less than $100,000 can get the advice someone with millions would have gotten in the past,” says financial blogger and money manager Wesley Gray. 
 
 Getty Images ABLE Accounts New state-level tax-advantaged savings plans aim to fix a longstanding problem: that disabled Americans are more likely to live in poverty and less likely to save for retirement than others. The programs, new in 2016 but made possible by the 2014 ABLE Act, allow anyone diagnosed with a disability before age 26 to save up to $14,000 a year without losing out on Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income benefits. Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, and Tennessee offer plans that are available nationally. 
 
 Photographs by Kristoffer Tripplaar / Alamy Stock Photo Index Fund Wars Here’s one fund company’s marketing ploy we can get behind: In October, ETF giant BlackRock slashed fees on 15 of its most popular funds, including iShares Core S&P 500, from 0.07% to 0.04%. Less than a week later, Schwab responded by slashing fees on five of its own ETFs, including one of its core bond options. Fidelity and Vanguard have also attracted attention with their own cuts, announced in June and December 2015. The fee cuts won’t save investors a ton of money; and of course, fund companies love the free publicity they’re getting for it. But investors are coming out winners in the long run, says Tom Roseen, head of research services at fund analyst Lipper: “It puts pressure on the whole industry to keep costs in check.” 
 
 (c) Tony Garcia Consumer Financial Protection Bureau The five-year-old Consumer Financial Protection Bureau hit its stride in 2016. Among the actions taken this year: In May, it proposed rules to limit mandatory arbitration clauses—contractual fine print that financial firms use to deprive disgruntled (and even defrauded) customers of their day in court. In June, it proposed rules to keep payday lenders—who make short-term loans at sky-high interest rates—from lending "without reasonably determining that the consumer has the ability to repay." In July, it proposed rules to limit how often debt collectors can contact consumers—and require them to get the details right. In September, it launched a massive enforcement action against Wells Fargo , which paid $100 million for opening some 2 million accounts without customer knowledge. And in October, the CFPB finalized rules that extend credit card protections to prepaid cards and payment apps like Venmo. ||||| Who did the most to improve the financial lives of Americans this year? After two months of poring over some 75 nominations from readers, experts, and staffers, the answer was clear. Meet MONEY’s pick for 2016’s most influential and informative (and, funny!) financial crusader—and the winner of our online readers’ choice poll as well. 
 
 Warning: The following joke is not safe for work and may offend longtime readers (and some financial advisors). The context: a June 2016 episode of HBO’s Sunday-night mock news magazine, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. 
 
 The Setup: “It is currently legal for financial advisers to put their own interests ahead of yours, unless—and this is interesting—they are what is called a fiduciary.” 
 
 The Punch Line: “Which is weird—it’s kind of like finding out that only some waiters are forbidden from ejaculating in your soup.” 
 
 Whether or not you laughed at that—trust us, it’s funnier on YouTube—one thing is clear: Before Oliver, nobody ever tried (let alone won an Emmy for) making watercooler-worthy entertainment out of complicated subjects critical to Americans’ financial health. The wage gap, predatory lending, and paid family leave each got the Last Week Tonight treatment during the show’s first two seasons. But Oliver has doubled down on personal finance in 2016, devoting entire shows to credit reports (in April), debt collection and retirement planning (in June), and auto lending (August). 
 
 “If it was a one-off, it’d be a big deal,” says Robert Weissman, president of the nonpartisan consumer rights group Public Citizen, about Oliver’s coverage of obscure financial issues. “But he’s doing it in one area after another. The heightened public awareness creates an environment in which it’s possible to win reform.” 
 
 That’s a big claim to make about a comedian. But truth be told—and his own protests notwithstanding— Oliver is doing a lot more than telling jokes. The show’s format allows for 20-minute deep dives, complete with detailed explanations, investigative reporting, exhortations for viewers to take action, and even practical advice of the kind MONEY routinely offers (albeit without expletives). 
 
 Oliver celebrates after retiring nearly $15 million of consumer medical debt. Courtesy of HBO/ 
 
 The jokes, meanwhile—which Oliver has said are dropped into scripts last, after weeks or months of research and fact-checking—are added largely to leaven the wonky stuff and sustain viewer attention. “They’re kind of the window dressing,” he told Vulture.com in February. “But you need to make sure that they’re hanging on something solid, because if that story falls apart, all the jokes fall apart.” 
 
 The resulting show has as much in common with the kind of populist TV journalism made famous by 60 Minutes as it does with the topical comedy style that Jon Stewart—Oliver’s former boss and mentor—invented on Comedy Central. 
 
 Take that June segment on retirement planning, for instance. The joke about fiduciaries (and soup) was followed by a capsule seminar, complete with graphs, on how compound interest can turn small fees into big losses over time. (“Think of fees like termites: They’re tiny; they’re hardly visible; and they can eat away your f–king future.”) Then came a quick lesson on active vs. passive investing. Then a few minutes on Oliver’s months-long effort to secure a low-fee 401(k) plan for his show’s own staff. (He had to fire the company’s provider to do it.) Finally, more than 18 minutes in, viewers saw a pre-produced parody of a financial firm ad, ending with a five-point plan for successful retirement savings. “Try to keep your fees, like your milk, below 1%,” comedian Billy Eichner deadpans to the camera as the piece ends. “Even one-tenth of 1% can really f–k you.” 
 
 Similarly, Oliver painstakingly picks apart the abuses of many debt collection businesses (partly by starting his own firm and buying $15 million worth of medical debt for pennies on the dollar); the high rate of credit reporting errors; and the systematic markups of the used-car industry. 
 
 Courtesy of HBO 
 
 Is there evidence that this approach actually changes minds, individual behavior, or public policy? The raw numbers suggest it resonates in a way that personal finance never has before. The retirement segment was seen by some 5 million viewers when it aired on HBO in June. More significantly, it went viral, garnering another 6 million views on YouTube and Facebook since then. That kind of multichannel success no doubt helped Oliver’s show capture its first Emmy for Outstanding Variety Talk Series in September. 
 
 But Oliver’s influence goes beyond ratings and cultural cachet. The so-called John Oliver effect—the idea that the comedian’s topical polemics translate into real change—has been a persistent Internet meme ever since the show’s first season. Oliver himself (who declined to comment for this article) pointedly deflates the notion, but fans and policy wonks alike see his fingerprints on a range of progressive policy developments in a variety of areas, from for-profit colleges to civil forfeiture. 
 
 In most cases the evidence is circumstantial—New York City reformed its bail policy less than a month after Oliver covered the topic, for example. But in 2014, Oliver’s fans notoriously crashed the website of the Federal Communications Commission after he implored them to voice concerns about pending threats to so-called net neutrality. A few months later the FCC issued rules holding firm on net neutrality. 
 
 But Oliver’s impact is arguably even subtler—and more powerful. “He’s really building a case for more control over predatory financial institutions,” says Public Citizen’s Weissman. Powerhouse Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren agrees. “John Oliver shines a light on some really big problems,” she told MONEY. “He makes us laugh and teaches us something, but he also calls on the audience to take action to influence public policy. He helps make change.” ||||| Who did the most to improve the financial lives of Americans this year? After two moths spent poring over some 75 nominations from readers, experts, and staffers, the answers became clear. MONEY picked John Oliver as 2016's most influential and informative (and funny!) financial crusader -- the man who managed to put a comedic spin on the wage gap, predatory lending, the fiduciary standard, and other complex topics. And then we went even further, identifying about a dozen other innovative people, products, and ideas that changed your money life for the better -- perhaps forever. Read on to see the individual financial heroes, and the game-changing products, services, and movements, that shook our world in 2016. 
 
 Photograph by Chris Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty Images Brad Katsuyama Invented a fairer stock market. If Brad Katsuyama gets his way, it will no longer be possible for a handful of professional investors to get an early peek at the trading of other market players. They won’t be able to jump in and fill orders at less-than-perfect prices -- and pocket the difference. His brainchild is a new stock exchange called the Investors Exchange, or IEX. If it succeeds, IEX will be a less expensive way for large traders like mutual funds to buy and sell stocks on behalf of ordinary investors. “Cheaper trades boost investment returns,” explains Joe Brennan, head of the equity index group at fund giant Vanguard, which has been complaining about high-speed trading abuses for years. At issue is so-called high-frequency trading, a strategy that uses powerful computers to rapidly buy and sell stocks, often looking to gain advantage over competitors by mere fractions of a second. Katsuyama’s IEX battles back by slowing down trading by 350-millionths of a second—a “speed bump” so small that humans don’t notice, but that eliminates high-frequency traders’ edge. 
 
 Photograph by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters Phyllis Borzi Got us the fiduciary rule. After nearly a decade of trying, the U.S. Department of Labor finally got it done: a rule that will require financial advisers to act in their clients’ best interests when managing retirement assets—in other words, to act as fiduciaries. That rule is set to go into effect next year in large part because of Phyllis Borzi, who jump-started the campaign when she joined the department as assistant secretary of labor for employee benefits security in 2009. The fiduciary standard is aimed at financial pros who push expensive or risky investments that pay them high commissions but aren’t necessarily the best choice for their clients. They are allowed to do this under a standard that requires only that investment recommendations be “roughly suitable.” According to a 2015 White House Council of Economic Advisers report, the resulting conflicted advice costs savers, on average, 1% a year in returns, or $17 billion. The Labor Department was forced to withdraw its initial proposal in the face of fierce industry and congressional opposition, but Borzi refused to give up. She formed alliances with consumer groups, brought industry executives to the table, and convinced the White House to use its bully pulpit on the issue. “Phyllis Borzi was the linchpin,” says Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America. “It would not have happened without her.” 
 
 Photograph by Shayla Hunter Charles Ellis Convinced us to index. For investors, 2016 was the year of the index fund. Some $175 billion was yanked from actively managed funds, while $326 billion was stashed in passive ones. This shift came about in large part because of the ideas of investment consultant and author Charles Ellis—whose new book, The Index Revolution, sums up the case he’s been making for decades. Back in 1975, Ellis wrote an article arguing that investors would come out ahead by simply avoiding mistakes rather than seeking to beat the market. Forty years of data have proved him to be prophetic. Central to Ellis’s case is the huge impact of investment costs. “It’s easy to ignore a 1% fee if you’re earning 15% returns,” says Ellis. “But today you’re lucky to get 7%, which means a 1% fee takes nearly 15% of your returns.” In today’s world of low returns, that’s a message that has never been more urgent. 
 
 Eleanor Holmes Norton (top). Pat Jehlen (at bottom, at left in blue jacket) at the signing of the Massachusetts equal pay law. Photographs by (Holmes Norton) Paul Sancya/AP Photo; (Jehlen) Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images Pat Jehlen and Eleanor Holmes Norton Battled the pay gap. The gender wage gap remains stubbornly persistent. But in 2016 two lawmakers made tangible progress in the slow-going battle to ensure equal pay for equal work. The first is Massachusetts State Sen. Pat Jehlen, who pushed a comprehensive equal pay law through the commonwealth’s legislature this summer. The law includes incentives for businesses to tackle gender pay imbalances and clear standards for making sure workers get “comparable pay for comparable work.” as state law has long required. But perhaps most important, the law bars Massachusetts employers from asking for an applicant’s salary history before extending a job offer. Advocates believe that prohibition will break the cycle by which one discriminatory wage leads inevitably to the next. Several states are modeling their own bills on the law, and New York City implemented a similar rule for city agencies in November. And on a national level it inspired the legendary congresswoman and equal rights leader Eleanor Holmes Norton to introduce the federal Pay Equity for All Act in the U.S. Congress in September. If passed, it would bar employers from asking about previous salaries nationwide. 
 
 Photograph by Joe Raedle/Getty Images EpiPen Parents Beat back Big Pharma. Outraged parents unleashed their fury on pharmaceutical maker Mylan this year for “unconscionable price gouging” on a product that their children literally could die without—leading to a congressional hearing, $500 million in penalties, and annual savings in the thousands. Mylan owns the EpiPen, a device that wards off life-threatening anaphylactic shock during allergic reactions. Families tend to restock EpiPens, which expire annually, during back-to-school season. It was then that many realized that their high-deductible insurance plans left them on the hook for the full retail price—over $600 per pack, up from less than $100 when Mylan acquired the product in 2007. Families need multiple packs (one each for school, home, and to carry around), so bills hit the thousands. Parents swarmed Mylan’s Facebook page, assailing the price increases, and wrote to politicians demanding action. Hundreds of thousands signed online petitions pleading for sensible pricing; allergy advocacy blogs were filled with heartbreaking personal stories. Months of bad publicity prodded Mylan into releasing coupons for bigger EpiPen discounts and launching a cheaper generic version. The uproar also led to federal probes, revealing Mylan has overcharged the Pentagon and Medicare for EpiPens to the tune of $500 million. 
 
 Photograph by Michael Hickey/Getty Images Mitch Daniels Tackled college debt. Starting this fall, the Purdue Research Foundation is paying tuition for more than 100 students—who, in return, agree to pay a portion of their future earnings. It’s the biggest program of its kind in the country. Purdue president Mitch Daniels, a two-term Republican governor of Indiana who joined the school in 2013, based his Back-a-Boiler program on an idea for income-share agreements (ISAs) proposed by economist Milton Friedman in 1955. But he’s been careful to avoid some pitfalls that sank previous ISAs; for example, he limits the term to nine years, so students aren’t doomed to a lifetime of payments. The experiment is winning bipartisan praise from education experts. And ISAs are just part of Daniels’ strategy at Purdue. He also cut room and board prices and froze tuition for in-state residents for the past three years. 
 
 Courtesy of Chase The Chase Sapphire Reserve Card So many people applied for a Sapphire Reserve card within days of its August launch that Chase literally ran out of the metallic card blanks and had to send temporary plastic ones instead. Why the stampede? The rewards are far better than any other card: three points per dollar spent on restaurants and travel, one point on everything else, and a 100,000-point sign-up bonus if users spend $4,000 within three months. Even the hefty $450 annual fee is mitigated by $300 worth of credits. But perks only partly explain the card’s blockbuster appeal: Customers flooded social media with “unboxing” videos of opening their cards for the first time. Hoping to inspire similar passion, Citi and AmEx boosted their sign-up bonuses and point structures. The Reward Wars rage on. 
 
 (c) Tony Garcia Vanguard Personal Advisor Services So-called robo-advisors—algorithms that pick investments based on your financial goals and risk tolerance—are all the rage, providing new competition for traditional (that is, human) financial planners. Fund giant Vanguard has steered a middle path. Its Personal Advisor Services—open to investors with $50,000—pairs computer-driven investing with an advisor you talk to over the phone. It grew into a juggernaut in 2016, reaching $46 billion in assets under management. It’s not hard to see why. At 0.3% of assets per year, fees are competitive with fully automated options. “Now someone with less than $100,000 can get the advice someone with millions would have gotten in the past,” says financial blogger and money manager Wesley Gray. 
 
 Getty Images ABLE Accounts New state-level tax-advantaged savings plans aim to fix a longstanding problem: that disabled Americans are more likely to live in poverty and less likely to save for retirement than others. The programs, new in 2016 but made possible by the 2014 ABLE Act, allow anyone diagnosed with a disability before age 26 to save up to $14,000 a year without losing out on Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income benefits. Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, and Tennessee offer plans that are available nationally. 
 
 Photographs by Kristoffer Tripplaar / Alamy Stock Photo Index Fund Wars Here’s one fund company’s marketing ploy we can get behind: In October, ETF giant BlackRock slashed fees on 15 of its most popular funds, including iShares Core S&P 500, from 0.07% to 0.04%. Less than a week later, Schwab responded by slashing fees on five of its own ETFs, including one of its core bond options. Fidelity and Vanguard have also attracted attention with their own cuts, announced in June and December 2015. The fee cuts won’t save investors a ton of money; and of course, fund companies love the free publicity they’re getting for it. But investors are coming out winners in the long run, says Tom Roseen, head of research services at fund analyst Lipper: “It puts pressure on the whole industry to keep costs in check.” 
 
 (c) Tony Garcia Consumer Financial Protection Bureau The five-year-old Consumer Financial Protection Bureau hit its stride in 2016. Among the actions taken this year: In May, it proposed rules to limit mandatory arbitration clauses—contractual fine print that financial firms use to deprive disgruntled (and even defrauded) customers of their day in court. In June, it proposed rules to keep payday lenders—who make short-term loans at sky-high interest rates—from lending "without reasonably determining that the consumer has the ability to repay." In July, it proposed rules to limit how often debt collectors can contact consumers—and require them to get the details right. In September, it launched a massive enforcement action against Wells Fargo , which paid $100 million for opening some 2 million accounts without customer knowledge. And in October, the CFPB finalized rules that extend credit card protections to prepaid cards and payment apps like Venmo. ||||| “The country has a lot of problems to solve. Tonight, we’ll solve none of them,” Stephen Colbert promised Saturday night—right before interviewing his fellow satirist John Oliver in front of a sold-out audience in Newark, New Jersey, during a benefit for the Montclair Film Festival, titled “Wow, That Was Weird: A Post-Election Evening with Stephen Colbert and John Oliver.” 
 
 He and Oliver kicked off the event with a fitting bit of symbolism. Throw pillows decorated each of their chairs: an American-flag pillow for Colbert, a British one for Oliver. The two waged a patriotic pillow fight, and when the dust settled, Colbert tossed his weapon to the floor between them. It landed with the American flag upside down, the signal for distress. They didn’t address it, but that moment of slapstick turned commentary seemed to perfectly reflect their task of doing comedy about—and for—a deeply divided country. 
 
 Oliver’s HBO series, Last Week Tonight, aired its post-election season finale a week ago. (The show returns for its fourth season February 12). In a half hour segment dedicated to Donald Trump’s victory, Oliver urged his viewers to remember that this election outcome was not normal. He elaborated on that theme Saturday: 
 
 “The danger of ‘Just live your lives, and the sun will come out tomorrow’ is, that’s true for some people, so it’s very easy to forget that it’s very much not for others. That’s the danger. If you’re lucky enough that your life can become routine, it’s easy to not to feel the hurt of those whose routine is going to be shattered,” he told Colbert. 
 
 “Not everyone is going to be O.K. So it’s incumbent upon all of us to remember that.” 
 
 Colbert agreed that Americans shouldn’t let their guard down now that Trump’s presidency is set in stone. 
 
 “I’m all for ‘Give him a chance,’ but don’t give him an inch. Because I believe everything he said, and it’s horrifying,” Colbert said. “Every president tries to achieve what they promised. . . . He owes the checks and balances of Washington nothing, because they tried to stop him. And he’s a vindictive person.” 
 
 Colbert and Oliver agreed that the Trump campaign wasn’t good for comedy, despite what fans may have assumed. Oliver said that this election actually gave his writing staff less material to work with than a typical race would. 
 
 “It’s an inverse version of what we normally do. With a campaign, you try to take something of substance, and then put some sugar on it. But there was so little of substance this whole campaign, it was just like a diabetes-inducing amount of sugar, and your job kind of flips on its head. Because you’re just trying to find a way to inject substance into sugar,” he explained. “So much time we were spending just trying to think about framing devices. How to make something out of what felt like nothing.” 
 
 For Colbert’s Late Show, the challenge was to get beyond the single narrative of Trump vs. Hillary Clinton. Colbert said his show’s researchers looked for any other election issue they could latch onto, and came up empty. 
 
 Election Night itself was particularly difficult for Colbert. He moved The Late Show from CBS to Showtime for a live episode, which he called “the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my professional life.” 
 
 “My audience was sobbing openly,” he said. 
 
 Colbert and his staff prepared material for every outcome they could reasonably expect that night: a clear Clinton win, a narrow Clinton lead, and a narrow Trump lead. They weren’t prepared for a Trump victory. Colbert said they were left with about 20 minutes worth of usable content. 
 
 “There are two and a half whole shows of material you’ll never see,” he said. 
 
 Colbert said he writes jokes based on what he feels, and doesn’t think about who his comedy may appeal to. He also rejected the idea that people on both ends of the political spectrum are living in a bubble. 
 
 “I don’t know what the word means, ‘echo chamber.’ Am I supposed to not value criticism and science?” he asked. 
 
 “I don’t think it’s an act of of hostility to not accept a worldview that I think is destructive,” Colbert added. “The fact [that] it’s not attractive to someone, I don’t find is my fault.” 
 
 While the two continually pulled each other back into earnest political discussions, their almost two-hour conversation was also peppered with lighter anecdotes, including some self-effacing professional lowlights. 
 
 Oliver relived an early career embarrassment—watching all four of his Edinburgh Fringe Festival audience members walk out partway through his stand-up show—as well as a humiliating audition for a deodorant commercial in which he was asked to remove his shirt. 
 
 “I could feel me losing the job” as he disrobed, he said. 
 
 For his part, Colbert noted an unfortunate acting credit he and Oliver share: roles in an infamous Mike Myers flop. 
 
 “If you haven’t seen The Love Guru, don’t,” Colbert warned the audience. 
 
 The oft-alleged “impact” of political satire inevitably came up during the audience question-and-answer portion of the evening. A journalist in the crowd told the pair that they “give journalism a good name,” a suggestion that put pained expressions on both comedians’ faces. 
 
 Oliver did concede that accuracy and thorough research is an important mandate for Last Week Tonight, but that’s purely for the sake of creating a solid foundation for his punch lines. 
 
 “If you build a joke on sand, it collapses,” Oliver said—but maintained that his show isn’t journalism. “It is a comedy show first, second, and final.” 
 
 Despite the important issues Last Week Tonight has tackled over the course of three seasons, Oliver said he gets the most pleasure from “wasting HBO’s resources” to execute ridiculous ideas. In particular, he said his 2014 Dog Supreme Court segment made him cry with laughter. 
 
 “The dumbest moments are the happiest I am,” Oliver said. 
 
 Likewise for Colbert. 
 
 “I aspire to be an idiot,” he said. “Being dumb is a really high calling.” 
 
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– "Financial crusader" John Oliver is riding a horse made of money on the latest cover of Money as its champion of the year. While Oliver recently joked that he's "wasting HBO’s resources," per Vanity Fair, Money notes he dedicated whole episodes of his third season of Last Week Tonight to "complicated subjects critical to Americans' financial health," including credit reports and retirement savings, offering "detailed explanations, investigative reporting, exhortations for viewers to take action, and even practical advice." The millions of viewers who tuned in suggest his approach—similar to "the kind of populist TV journalism made famous by 60 Minutes"—"resonates in a way that personal finance never has before," the magazine says. "The heightened public awareness creates an environment in which it's possible to win reform," says the head of Public Citizen. Indeed, Money credits Oliver with pushing the Big Apple to revamp its bail policy, while noting the FCC issued its net neutrality ruling a few months after Oliver's fans caused its website to crash. "John Oliver shines a light on some really big problems," says Elizabeth Warren. "He makes us laugh and teaches us something, but he also calls on the audience to take action to influence public policy. He helps make change." Money also named 12 other champions of 2016, including the parents who rallied against a spike in EpiPen prices, leading to $500 million in penalties for maker Mylan. (In one episode of his show, Oliver gave away $15 million.)