Elizabeth Warren via White House Blog

FIGHTING TO PROTECT CONSUMERS

Over the past several weeks, the President and I have had extensive conversations about the vital importance of consumer financial protection.

The President asked me, and I enthusiastically agreed, to serve as an Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  He has also asked me to take on the job to get the new CFPB started—right now.  The President and I are committed to the same vision on CFPB, and I am confident that I will have the tools I need to get the job done.

President Obama understands the importance of leveling the playing field again for families and creating protections that work not just for the wealthy or connected, but for every American. The new consumer bureau is based on a pretty simple idea:  people ought to be able to read their credit card and mortgage contracts and know the deal.  They shouldn’t learn about an unfair rule or practice only when it bites them—way too late for them to do anything about it.  The new law creates a chance to put a tough cop on the beat and provide real accountability and oversight of the consumer credit market.  The time for hiding tricks and traps in the fine print is over.  This new bureau is based on the simple idea that if the playing field is level and families can see what’s going on, they will have better tools to make better choices.

If the CFPB can succeed at leveling the playing field,  we can go a long way toward repairing a gaping hole in the budgets of millions of families.  But nobody has ever thought or argued that the consumer bureau can fix everything.  Lost jobs, stagnant incomes, rising costs for college, dwindling retirement savings—there’s a lot of work to be done.

When she was 16, my grandmother, Hannie Reed, drove a wagon in the Oklahoma land rush.  Her mother had died, so she was up front with her little brothers and sisters bouncing around in the back.  When I was growing up, she talked about life on the prairie, about marrying my grandfather and making a living building one-room schoolhouses, about getting wiped out in the Great Depression.  She was hit with hard challenges throughout her life, but the moral of her stories was always the same:  she would solve her problems one at a time by pulling up her socks and getting to work.

It’s time for all of us to pull up our socks and get to work.

NOTE:Attorney barred in the District of Columbia and California currently looking for opportunities in the private and government sectors.  Specializes in ediscovery/litigation efficiency project management but can do straight litigation or litigation management.  Feel free to contact me with opportunities at progress@progresspolitics.com

The President named Elizabeth Warren as Special Advisor for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  As Special Advisor Warren will be the person setting up the new agency in the coming months.  Because the President named Warren as Special Advisor she does not have to go through a long drawn out Senate confirmation battle that is guaranteed to occur at some point.  You see, when Warren is eventually appointed the OFFICIAL head of the CFPB she will have to endure the Senate confirmation process.  But lucky for the American people that will not happen before the agency is ramped up.  The person setting the agency’s mission statement and drafting the requisite regulation for the financial industry…..ELIZABETH WARREN!  Granted she does have to answer to Timmy Geitner but she primarily answers to the President!!!!  This is AMAZING News!!!!

Warren was named a counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who under the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law is responsible for setting up the bureau before it becomes an independent agency housed at the Federal Reserve. While Warren’s job will be to help establish the bureau, she would be under Geithner. The position would allow her to avoid a Senate confirmation battle and immediately influence the agency she is credited with first proposing several years ago. – Bloomberg News

More

Bankers appear to be resigning themselves to a fate worse than tougher financial regulation: The hard-charging Harvard professor, who oversees TARP funding, seems a near-cinch to be named the nation’s consumer watchdog. “At this point, it seems pretty clear that she’s going to get the nomination.”

Why Warren is a necessity:

Predation is a mainstream business for major banks, and has been for decades. Banks made $38 billion in overdraft revenue in 2009, while the industry’s total combined profit was just $12.5 billion. The sub-prime crisis actually happened. The entire country is still drowning in foreclosures, and unrestrained predatory lending helped crash the entire global economy. We’ve spent the last 30 years allowing outrageous abuses on a massive scale in the name of financial innovation. Banks are still the most powerful lobby group in Washington.– Zach Carter, AlterNet

Bankers not happy

S]he is not an ideological crusader. This fact, in truth, is why the bank lobby so fervently opposes putting her in a position of regulatory authority. For decades, all of our bank regulators have been driven by ideological agendas. They’ve aggressively pursued any policy that creates short-term profits for Wall Street, under the view that anything that generates money for Wall Street is expanding credit in society and furthering productive economic growth. – Zach Carter, AlterNet

Elizabeth Warren background

Somewhere along the line, Elizabeth Warren became a symbol.

She’s either the plain-spoken, supremely smart crusader for middle-class families that her supporters adore, or she’s the power-hungry headline seeker her critics loathe, a fiery zealot disguised in professorial glasses and pastel cardigans.

……….

He would be elevating a woman who, despite her mild manner, has repeatedly proven herself a thorn in the administration’s side during her tenure as watchdog over the government’s $700 billion bank bailout program.The real Elizabeth Warren doesn’t so neatly fit the labels others readily attach to her.

She was the child of a cash-strapped family on the Oklahoma plains, a teenage wife and young mother who became the only member of her immediate family to graduate from college, then went on to teach at Harvard Law School. Drawn to the field of bankruptcy, she initially took a jaundiced view of the irresponsible spendthrifts she believed were gaming the system, only to discover during her research a humanity in their stories that altered her life’s work. She has long maintained the bearing of a straight-shooting, “aw shucks” Washington outsider, even though she began showing her Beltway savvy as a political infighter more than a decade ago.

But no one disputes that she’s the most prominent and polarizing candidate to lead the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. The idea for an independent federal agency to protect ordinary borrowers from abuses by lenders was largely Warren’s idea, and Congress made it a reality as part of the legislation adopted last month to overhaul financial regulations. The bureau’s director will be the most powerful new banking regulator in decades and the first with the exclusive mission of focusing on consumers.

NOTE:Attorney barred in the District of Columbia and California currently looking for opportunities in the private and government sectors.  Specializes in ediscovery/litigation efficiency project management but can do straight litigation or litigation management.  Feel free to contact me with opportunities at progress@progresspolitics.com

First, because it would be the best news that we have reported in months.  The White House absolutely should Elizabeth Warren as the FIRST interim Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau!  Second, it would be a clear sign that the President is choosing Main Street over Wall Street.  According to our unscientific political calculation putting Elizabeth Warren in the top spot of the newly forming agency will do miracles in motivating the base.  Why?  Because it will show that the White House is listening to the people who did the work to put them at Pennsylvania Avenue.   Not to mention bring back more of those independents.  As the FIRST Director of CFPB, Warren will shape the agency’s mission, tone, and direction.  It is critical the the RIGHT person be the first Director.  Elizabeth Warren is absolutely the right person.

In addition,

Warren could serve until Obama nominates a permanent director — a nomination he’s not required to make, meaning that Warren could serve indefinitely with the full powers of the director. Obama could follow the interim nomination by later naming Warren as the permanent director, giving the Senate an opportunity to debate her selection. The ability of the administration to nominate an acting director indefinitely, avoiding a lengthy confirmation battle, was first reported by HuffPost’s Shahien Nasiripour in July. American Banker is also reporting that Warren is under consideration for the interim position.

No filibustering!  Rumor has it that the appointment will be made this week.  Keep your fingers cross.

NOTE:Attorney barred in the District of Columbia and California currently looking for opportunities in the private and government sectors.  Specializes in ediscovery/litigation efficiency project management but can do straight litigation or litigation management.  Feel free to contact me with opportunities at progress@progresspolitics.com

For whatever reason Elizabeth Warren has not yet been named to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  One can only surmise that Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, and Chris Dodd, have something to do with the delay.  Tim Geithner is rumored to be concerned because of the following:

Geithner, being very close to the nation’s biggest banks, is concerned that Warren, if chosen, will exercise her new policing and enforcement powers to restrict those abusive practices at our commercial banks that have been harmful to consumers and depositors…..

I believe Geithner sees the appointment of Elizabeth Warren as a threat to the very scheme he has utilized to date to hide bank losses, thus keeping the banks solvent and out of bankruptcy court and their existing management teams employed and well-paid.

Geithner’s alleged scheme is to allow banks to earn their way through all of the bad assets on its books due to the mortgage crisis caused primarily by Wall Street itself.  How do banks get back in the black?  By bilking consumers through excessive and abusive fees.  In other words, a government sanctioned bailout taken directly from American consumers with a disingenuous air of legitimacy to cover up the the greed and excesses of the banking and financial industry.  Elizabeth Warren, as the new top consumer advocate, would prevent that from happening.

As for Chris Dodd, first he said this:

“She’s qualified, no question about that,” Dodd said. “The question is whether she’s confirmable.”

Now he says this:

“My simple question about Elizabeth is: Is she confirmable?” Dodd said during a visit Tuesday with The Courant’s Editorial Board. “It isn’t just a question of being a consumer advocate. I want to see that she can manage something, too.”

Dodd’s first concern was is Elizabeth Warren confirmable?  When Dodd’s initial objection received no traction because it’s clear that Warren enjoys the support of both Republicans and Democrats.  If fact, it would be politically astute to name Warren because she is the most feared candidate by Wall Street.  One can almost dare a Republican or Democrat for that matter to vote against a clear champion for the middle class taking on Goliath.  It’s quite interesting that Dodd would oppose Warren considering the purpose of the agency is protect consumers and Warren has been doing so her entire career.  Could it be that the closer Dodd gets to retirement the less he thinks about the American consumer and the more he must think about the interest of his future employers.? Warren is currently the watchdog over the government’s $700 billion bailout of the financial services industry.   In the TARP watchdog role we are quite sure that the Harvard professor originally from Oklahoma has  stepped on a few toes close to Dodd?  Dodd’s tepid endorsement of Warren leads many to believe that he will he go the route of Tom Daschle.  Influence peddler who is not a registered lobbyist.  Perhaps Dodd will be an influence peddler lobbyist for Wall Street banks? Hmmmm….time will tell. 

Management skills can be easily obtained through on-the-job training.  However, providing real leadership and being a visionary, assets that Elizabeth Warren clearly brings,  are essential components for the head of  a new bureau going up against the monolith that is Wall Street.  Elizabeth Warren is an independent, strong-willed, advocate for the non-rich who is the only acceptable person to head the new bureau. 

Call your Senator and tell him/her to support Warren as the new Sheriff of Wall Street.  Further, call the White House and tell the President that you support Warren to head CFPB.  202-456-1111

A little something from the Main Street Brigade with a shout out to Oklahoma where Elizabeth Warren was born.

NOTE:Attorney barred in the District of Columbia and California currently looking for opportunities in the private and government sectors.  Specializes in ediscovery/litigation efficiency project management but can do straight litigation or litigation management.  Feel free to contact me with opportunities at progress@progresspolitics.com

The following is a speech delivered by Elizabeth Warren at Netroots Nation 2010.

My grandmother, when she was a teenager, drove a wagon in the land rush that settled Oklahoma. Her mother was dead, and her little brothers and sisters were in the back of the wagon. Her father had ridden ahead and tried to find a piece of land that might be somewhere near water–a hard task in Oklahoma. She grew up in that part of the world, she met my grandfather, they got married, they started building one-room schoolhouses and little modest homes across the prairie. They had kids, they stretched, they scratched, they worked hard, they made a little money, and they put it aside, put it in the bank. It got completely wiped out in 1907 in an economic panic. But like many American families, they came back. They started scratching and stretching again, and having more babies–and then the Depression came. And they got wiped out one more time.

You see, my grandmother was born into the world of boom and bust, boom and bust, as it had been from 1794 until the Great Depression. But my grandmother also lived in a world of economic transformation. Because coming out of the Great Depression, just three laws fundamentally altered the course of America’s history.

The first one, FDIC insurance, made it safe to put money in banks. The second one, Glass-Steagal, tried to separate the risk-taking on Wall Street from your local community bank. And the third one, SEC regulations, provide some cops to watch the robbers. And so, out of that, what we got was 50 years of economic peace. No financial panics, no meltdowns. And during that 50 years, we built a strong and prosperous middle class in America.

Now, my grandmother, when she died in 1970 at the age of 94, had been part of that. She owned a little house, she had plenty of groceries in the cupboard, and she had some cash in the bank. She was part of the growth of middle-class America. As were her children and her grandchildren. But shortly after my grandmother died, within a few years, we began unraveling that. Part of it was on the regulatory side. We hadn’t been clever about regulations. They stayed ossified. The regulations put in place in the 1930s had not been updated. They had not adapted to a new world. And along came a new group of people who said, “Let’s just get rid of the regulations. What are they there for anyway? They just cost money. Dump the regulations.” And so the regulatory framework, or the “cops,” who were on the beat began to disappear. They lost their effectiveness.

Another thing happened in that period of time, and that is the foundations of middle-class America began to erode. Start with income. Income and productivity across America had been intertwined after World War II. So every year, basically, productivity was going up–so were wages. But starting in the late 1970s those two begin to diverge, so that productivity continues to rise–indeed rise at a somewhat steeper rate–while incomes flatten out, so that today a fully employed male makes less money than his father made a generation ago, once we adjust for inflation.

On the income side, they’re flat, but on the expense side, these families are not. The core expenses for the middle class–housing, health insurance, day care, college, the things that make a family safer, the things that make a family middle class, the things that let them invest in their children and the future–those went up, adjusted for inflation, by more than 100 percent. Families spent more, but they had flat incomes.

Now, anyone here can figure out what happens next. And that is, savings begin to decline, families who had put money away could no longer do it, and debt begins to rise. And families end up with more mortgage debt, more credit card debt, more car loan debt, more debt of every form. The credit industry then smells an opportunity. It says, “Wait a minute. The old regulations are gone, and middle-class families are under a lot of economic stress. There’s money to be made in this situation.” And indeed there was.

At first it was just the money of lending more, right? More money lent, more income coming in. Got that one. But over time, with the regulations having changed, the business model itself changed so that the old form of lending–the notion that you put the agreement out there, you can see what the interest rate is, you can see how often you have to make the payment, and what the payment is, and that’s the deal: both sides get what the transaction is–that model gave way to a very different pricing model. A “tricks and traps” pricing model. One in which the promise gets cheaper and cheaper: 7.9 percent financing; 3.99 percent financing; zero financing. Cheap, cheap, cheap. Why? Because the real plan is to make the money on the back end. The real plan is to bury the tricks and traps in the fine print, and make really big money back there.

Now what’s the consequence of doing that? Well, the consequence is families can’t price it. You can’t tell up front how much it costs to take out these credit agreements, and more importantly families can’t compare. So the old notion of a competitive market, where you compare products and the best products survive and the worst products get washed out, goes away. Who can tell in here–lay four credit card agreements in front of you–which one is actually the cheapest one? Which is the one that carries the lowest risk? Without a competitive market, the consequence is a big hole in the boat for consumers on credit, so that last year–you watch your numbers?–about $150 billion flowed out of the pockets of ordinary, middle-class families on penalty rates, on penalty rates of interest, on regular rates of interest, on credit cards, on payday loans, on check overdraft, on kickbacks on car loans, all out there coming out of the pockets of ordinary, middle-class families.

So that’s where the market stood, and now we are here at an historic moment. President Obama signed into law the strongest financial reforms in three generations. And in my view, the strongest of those financial reforms is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It’s tough.

And I want to be clear: the president is the one who led on the consumer agency. He insisted it be in there, and he never wavered on that. So we have now the tools on the table to make significant change. The tools to let us get to a time when credit card agreements can be two pages long. When it’s obvious what the cost of a mortgage is, and it’s easy to compare across four mortgages or six mortgages. We can move to that time, but we gotta pick up the tools and use them. This agency must be built. It doesn’t come–think about this statute that’s just been passed. It has a few pieces in it about changes in specific law, but what it mostly is is about the tool of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

I wanted to talk to you for just a minute today about what it is that we might do with this bureau. What it is that–when we’re building something new–what you want to build into its DNA. And so I thought of four things that we should think about as we begin to build a new bureau.

The first one is, it must stand for families. We’ve had long enough where there’s been no one to stand for families. Now what does that mean? It means, in part, in the case of the credit agreements that we’ve been talking about, a level playing field again. It means that there’s someone there to make sure that both families, and lenders, understand the terms of the credit agreement. That it is as obvious to one side as the other. That when they come together, they get what this transaction is. The cost. That we create competitive markets so that the products are products that are not only priced so that consumers can understand them, but they’re priced well in the marketplace.

But it also means something else to stand on behalf of families. When powerful people get together in our government, and they start to divide up where things are going to go, when they start to make decisions about who is going to be helped and who is not going to be helped, there needs to be at least one person in the room who asks the question, “How will this affect America’s families?” Not just how will it affect America’s banks, not just how will it affect America’s businesses, but how it will it affect America’s families. One of the things this bureau can do is be there on behalf of American families.

But a second thing I think is really critical about this agency is it must be reality-based. It’s not good enough to have a great theory. And frankly, it’s not good enough to have just a good heart. It’s got to be grounded in how things really work on the ground. So now I’m going to give you an example of that: small banks. If the consequence of this agency is to put in enough new bureaucratic obligations that it crushes community banks, then the agency will not have been successful. If the community banks are driven out of business, that creates more concentration in the banking industry. The big get bigger and the small go away. But it also means there are fewer of those banks around to lend to the small businesses that we’re counting on to restart this economy. And it means that families themselves have fewer choices between small banks and big banks. And that’s a choice we’ve got to preserve.

So ultimately what this agency has to be about is, yes, the first one on the side of the families, but second, the side of creating workable, realistic markets. Sustainable markets over time. Markets that work for consumers, but that also create a viable, functioning credit system. It’s got to be part of what goes into this.

The third part is the bureau has to be able to grow and change. Part of what went wrong in the 1930s was that we didn’t keep the rules up to date. The world changed around it. The markets changed around it. How families behaved changed around it. But the rules were not changing. They were not vital. And so, what this agency–what we have to think about when you’re building in at the beginning is, “How do you build change? How do you build some creative destruction into the agency itself?”

I come from the world of bankruptcy. It’s what I teach. Bankruptcy is littered with the businesses that didn’t adapt to the world. Government doesn’t have that same discipline in it. And so part of building this agency is building in how it will change and adapt over time. That it has the right structure to do that.

And then the last part I want to mention is part of why I’m here. This will be the first agency we have built in a wired world. Think about that for just one minute. The relationship between government agencies, between bureaucracy, between the government and its people. At the time we built all of the earlier agencies, it was one of… the government labors in relative obscurity, and you send out some information, and people get it through their newspapers, or watching television, or radio, or whatever they listen to. This is an agency that will be the first to be born digital. It will be an agency that will have the capacity to communicate with millions of Americans by just hitting a send button. It will also be an agency where millions of Americans have the capacity to communicate with the agency by hitting a send button. The possibilities here are endless. The notion that part of how one comes to understand and define the problems in the credit area will change if we hear–if this agency hears, if this bureau hears–from people who are experiencing it. This can be built into the research function of the agency. If the agency can hear from people and communicate with people, it changes the concept of how regulations work, of how regulations are tested, of how regulations are communicated, and of how they are enforced.

I think of this as a real opportunity, as we build this agency, not to replicate what was built last time when we had a consumer agency in the 1970s, but to try a whole new model. To think about this agency from a different perspective. That’s why I came here today. I bought a plane ticket and showed up here because I have a specific task.

I wanted to talk to people who have a voice, and that’s why I came to talk to you. There are three things I want to ask you to do with your voice. I want to ask you to use your voice on behalf of economic security for middle-class Americans. In a world in which so many people face so much insecurity, I want you to give them voice. I also want to ask you to use your voice for ideas. This is the place to let ideas be born, to let them bounce around, to let them get tougher, to let the bad ones die out and the good ones advance. This is where ideas should come from. And the third is, I’m going to ask you to use your voice as a voice of conscience in a world that sorely needs more conscience. You are our collective conversation on conscience.

I’m going to wrap this up by saying we have an opportunity now to pick up the tools that were laid out in this new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Unused tools don’t do anyone any good. The point is to pick them up and use them. And it’s going to be tough. The era of my grandmother in the Great Depression, it was tough then. Remember, Franklin Roosevelt faced his economic royalists. Remember, it took him years to get his entire economic package into place. It paid off. It was tough, but it paid off. So what I want to think about is what we do from this moment going forward. If you have any doubts about where we’re headed and how much change we can make, I ask you for just one second to glance back over your shoulder at where we have traveled over the last year.

I was in Chairman Barney Frank’s office just a few weeks ago–and Barney Frank deserves as much credit as anyone on this planet for keeping this Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and making it strong. So, Chairman Frank and I were talking about some details about the bureau, and what might happen, and not, in conference. We got to the end, and Barney looked up in that way he does–you know, over the top of his glasses, and he growled–because that’s the only way I know to describe a conversation with Barney–he said [speaks in raspy, growling voice], “You know, Elizabeth, a year ago this idea wouldn’t have even qualified as a pipe dream. And here we are.”

And here’s the best part of it when you’re thinking about what we can do. We’re not here today because the banks gave it to us. The banks did not, a year ago, say, “Well, we’re really sorry we broke the economy, and, um, uh, we really appreciate that you put $700 billion and a few trillion in guarantees on the table to help bail us out, and therefore we’re gonna support some regulation for ordinary families to kind of level the playing field, and just make sure everybody’s getting a fair deal here, that you can read your credit card contracts and mortgage agreements….”

They didn’t say that. They fought us every single inch of the way. They announced in August of last year that the consumer agency was dead. And why was it dead? Because they were going to kill it. They were quoted in the New York Times. They were that sure of themselves. The lobbyists came out and said, “We will kill the consumer agency.” And they announced it, and they re-announced it, and they re-announced it. They announced its death over and over and over. If you check the papers, the agency was still dead as of February of this year. But we didn’t give up. We scratched, and we bit, and we hung on. And we didn’t give up. And today here’s where we are. With a good, strong set of tools to change the consumer market.

So let me wrap this back around. Is this going to save the middle class by itself–the consumer agency? I’ve written about the middle class now for two decades–and if you want to give me another couple of hours I could bend your ear about all that’s happened here–and the answer is no. There’s frankly too much that’s broken. We’ve got to have change in labor policy, we’ve got to have change in health policy, we’ve got to have changes in education policy. That’s what it will take to restore a middle class. But we also have to have changes in consumer credit policy. And the new bill is a big step in that direction.

So, here’s what I want to say: One way or another, I’ll keep pushing for the middle class. I hope you will too.

Rightly so.

Katrina over at the Nation magazine tweeted the following:

WH (& others) indicate Elizabeth Warren 2 be nominated next week to head Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Kudos 2 all who worked 4 her.

If the White House wants to motivate the base and independents for the midterm elections this is a step in that direction. 

NOTE:Attorney barred in the District of Columbia and California currently looking for opportunities in the private and government sectors.  Specializes in ediscovery/litigation efficiency project management but can do straight litigation or litigation management.  Feel free to contact me with opportunities at progress@progresspolitics.com

Elizabeth Warren on Consumer Protection (MMBM) from Roosevelt Institute

Elizabeth Warren is the only person to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

NOTE:Attorney barred in the District of Columbia and California currently looking for opportunities in the private and government sectors.  Specializes in ediscovery/litigation efficiency project management but can do straight litigation or litigation management.  Feel free to contact me with opportunities at progress@progresspolitics.com

NOTE:Attorney barred in the District of Columbia and California currently looking for opportunities in the private and government sectors.  Specializes in ediscovery/litigation efficiency project management but can do straight litigation or litigation management.  Feel free to contact me with opportunities at progress@progresspolitics.com

The people have spoken and they WANT Elizabeth Warren as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Sorry Geitner, you LOSE!   Listening to CSPAN this morning you would think that we have a single political party in this country.  When C-SPAN posed the question of  “should Elizabeth Warren run the Consumer Financial Protection Agency [Bureau]” something like 99 percent of all the callers, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and Libertarians, from all over the country voiced their enthusiastic support for Elizabeth Warren to lead the new bureau.  As a long time listener to Washington Journal this was a first!  It was fantastic to hear that people see the greatness in this woman that I have been preaching for the last eighteen months.  Warren is a lifetime advocate for the consumer and is the only person who can be trusted with shaping this new agency in the spirit of its genesis.

This is also very important to the American people being that the Bureau’s focus will be consumer protection.  This is the Wall Street police and Elizabeth Warren is the only CREDIBLE person who can walk the beat.  The President should know that for people to think he is serious he must choose the right person for this job.  This is Elizabeth Warren’s brainchild and for her not to be the first person to lead it and set the tone would be a travesty to her as a loyal supporter of this administration and a travesty to the consuming public.  The only folks who are alleged to have a problem with Warren are Geitner (because he wants his asst treasury secretary for the position and Warren calls him on his BS), Wall Street (who wants a competent cop with integrity), and the GOP (Wall Street enabler).

Main Street or Wall Street?  Elizabeth Warren has proven that she is most definitely Main street.  If the President’s goal is to look out for Main Street neither of the other two candidates in contention  will do it as well as Warren. Warren is a trustworthy, independent, common sense voice who has the backs of the American people.  We will know how serious the President is about consumer protection and this Bureau when he makes this pick.

We trust Elizabeth Warren similar to the way we trust you Mr. President.  Please don’t let us down.

Attorney barred in the District of Columbia and California currently looking for opportunities in the private and government sectors.  Specializes in ediscovery/litigation efficiency project management but can do straight litigation or litigation management.  Feel free to contact me with opportunities at progress@progresspolitics.com

If there is any chance of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau being competent and effective it MUST have Elizabeth Warren at its helm.  The fact that Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner opposes Warren reinforces the above conclusion.  Wall Street has been lobbying against Warren since her name was first mention as the only person to lead it.  Geitner with his friends in the financial industry are prefer to rule unfettered.   Big old Wall Street fears Elizabeth Warren and that is exactly the way it should be.  As Chairman of the TARP oversight committee Elizabeth Warren held Wall Street executives and Tim Geitner’s feet to the fire.  This is the only person capable and credible enough to fight on behalf of the American consumer.  Take a look at why Geitner fears Warren:

While her grilling of Geithner in September, over what members of Congress have called the “backdoor bailout” of Wall Street through AIG, inspired the “squirm” video, just last month Warren pressed Geithner on the administration’s lackluster foreclosure-prevention plan, Making Home Affordable. Criticizing him for Treasury’s failure to keep families in their homes, she questioned Treasury’s commitment to homeowners.

Warren’s persistent oversight is part of the reason for Geithner’s opposition, according to the source.

And another reason for Geitner’s opposition and why Warren is the ONLY person for this job

Geithner’s objections to Warren taking over that role also involve her views on Wall Street, sources say. The longtime professor believes the nation’s megabanks are Too Big To Fail and have been among the biggest abusive lenders in the country. Her toughness on giant banks is said to be a longtime source of tension with Geithner.

The words of our President:

“The truth of the matter is that the banking industry has used credit cards and pushed credit cards on consumers in ways that have been very damaging,” Obama said according to a transcript. “There’s a woman named Elizabeth Warren who’s a professor at Harvard who did a great deal of study around this. And she made a simple point. You know, if you bought a toaster, and the toaster blew up in your face, there would be a law, a consumer safety law, that would protect you from buying that toaster. But if you get a credit card that blows up in your face, that starts off at zero-percent interest, and once they kind of suck in the — buying a bunch of stuff and suddenly it’s 29 percent; and if you’re late two days, suddenly, you know, you just paid another $30, and all kinds of fine print that a lot of folks didn’t understand — well, somehow that’s okay.

“I think generally having some consumer safety, some consumer protection around credit cards, is important,” Obama added.

This really is non-negotiable.  If the Obama administration is serious about consumer protection Elizabeth Warren must head the CFPB.

Attorney barred in the District of Columbia and California currently looking for opportunities in the private and government sectors.  Specializes in ediscovery/litigation efficiency project management but can do straight litigation or litigation management.  Feel free to contact me with opportunities at progress@progresspolitics.com

It was reported yesterday that Nebraska Senator Bill Nelson of “Nebraska kickback” fame held out on the financial reform bill because he had concerns about Elizabeth Warren being appointed to head the pending Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Are you kidding me???  Elizabeth Warren is the only person to head the new Bureau.  Warren is the only one that can be trusted not to capitulateto the Federal Reserve and corporate interest.  Therein lies corporate captured Nelson’s issue with Warren as the head of the new Bureau.  Warren’s focus and priority will be protection of consumers and that represents a huge problem for Nelson’s corporate special interest.  If the Administration puts the interest of consumers first it will choose Warren and Nelson’s input will be an empty gesture on its part.  Warren has the skill, knowledge, and dedication to get the job done right.  There is no other person for this job.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) explicitly told reporters this evening he’s not committed to voting for the legislation, citing a handful of measures, and concern about potential future directors of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“You don’t know who’s going to be head of the consumer protection bureau,” Nelson said after a vote. “You can’t just send a rogue agency out on its own.”

An agency that sole purpose is protecting consumers is a rogue agency???

Attorney barred in the District of Columbia and California currently looking for opportunities in the private and government sectors.  Specializes in ediscovery/litigation efficiency project management but can do straight litigation or litigation management.  Feel free to contact me with opportunities at progress@progresspolitics.com

The only clear choice to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau if Elizabeth Warren.  The whole idea is her brainchild and it is crystal clear that her focus will be consumer first.  Warren also has the chops to back up her position.  Because it has been suggested that many of the employees will come from existing agencies we need someone at the head who has a clear vision of the Bureau’s purpose and mission.  The last thing that American consumers need is for the Bureau to be captured by agencies such as the Federal Reserve and the Treasury department.  It would defeat the purpose of the Bureau and put us back in the same place we were prior to its existence. 

Once under way, the agency is likely to be the most visible manifestation to consumers from the extensive financial-regulatory legislation expected to clear Congress next week. It will write rules on checking accounts, credit cards and mortgages. It will field complaints from the public about lending practices. It will enforce its rules across the economy, from big banks to credit counselors—though not auto dealers, which won’t fall under the agency’s supervision, after much lobbying.

The president’s choice of a director, subject to Senate confirmation, is almost certain to be controversial, given the power of the position and the fight over whether to create the agency in the first place.

Like Joseph Kennedy Sr., the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the new director will shape the powerful agency’s public image, initial priorities and starting lineup.

Democratic leaders in Congress say their top pick for the post is Elizabeth Warren, the high-profile Harvard law professor and an outspoken critic of what she sees as a too-cozy relationship between government and bankers.

Some of the candidates mentioned are:

Michael Barr, a Treasury assistant secretary and University of Michigan law professor; Attorneys general Martha Coakley of Massachusetts, Lisa Madigan of Illinois and Lori Swanson of Minnesota; Susan Wachter of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School; and Nicolas Retsinas of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing studies.

Elizabeth Warren is the ONLY choice.

Attorney barred in the District of Columbia and California currently looking for opportunities in the private and government sectors.  Specializes in ediscovery/litigation efficiency project management but can do straight litigation or litigation management.  Feel free to contact me with opportunities at progress@progresspolitics.com

Elizabeth Warren spoke out yesterday regarding the state of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency now more likely to be called the Consumer Financial Protection Board.  The CFPB still has an independent director, an independent and permanent source of funding from the Federal Reserve that cannot be cuttoff by Congress, and independent authority to write and enforce rules.  We still do not like that the Board will be housed inside the Federal Reserve however.  Nor are we happy that a council of regulators consisting of  the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission have veto power over rules drafted by the CFPB if two-thirds of such regulators believe the proposed rule would jeopardize the “safety and soundness” of banks. 

However, though the automobile lenders carve out is very disappointing to Warren she still believes that there is enough meat in the bill for the Board to be effective. 

“I’m disappointed that Congress seems to be taking the side of auto lenders and big banks over the Pentagon, community banks, and all the public interest groups that oppose an auto dealer carve-out, and there are some other problems as well,” said Warren. “But right now the bureau has the authority and the independence it needs to fix the broken credit market. I keep waiting for an incoming missile that means the banks have won their fight to destroy this consumer agency, but that hasn’t happened so far — and I don’t think it will.”

Republicans are still siding with the banks and maintaining that an independent agency goes too far and consumers should not be protected from the deceptive lending practices of financial institutions.  Remember, this is how they will rule if they gain majority.

Republicans proposed an amendment that would prevent Warren from heading the agency but it failed miserably.  Elizabeth Warren is the ONLY person to head this agency.

Attorney barred in the District of Columbia and California currently looking for opportunities in the private and government sectors.  Specializes in ediscovery/litigation efficiency project management but can do straight litigation or litigation management.  Feel free to contact me with opportunities at progress@progresspolitics.com

In 2006 the American Bankers Association argued vociferously in favor of separating consumer protection function from the “safety and soundness of banks” function.  However, now that it is about to happen the banks have had a change of heart in light of the fact that separating the two would no longer allow them to fleece consumers for profit.  TARP watchdog, and my hero, Elizabeth Warren recently penned an op-edabout the necessity for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency and calling the ABA on its hypocrisy.

ABA lobbyists now aggressively insist that separating consumer protection and safety and soundness functions would unravel bank stability. Yet just a few years ago, they heatedly argued the opposite — that the functions should be distinct.

In 2006, the ABA claimedto act on principle as it railed against an interagency guidance designed to exercise some modest control over subprime mortgages. It criticized the proposal for “combin[ing] safety and soundness guidance with consumer protection guidance, creating confusion that is best addressed by separating them.”

The ABA went on to argue that the “marriage of inconvenience between supervision and consumer protection appears to blur long-established jurisdictional lines.” And then: “ABA recommends that the safety and soundness provisions relating to underwriting and portfolio management be separated from the consumer protection provisions.”

Read that again: The ABA in 2006 said that policymakers should separate safety-and-soundness and consumer protection — exactly the opposite of its position today.

This 2006 memo illustrates the ABA’s real consistency — consistent opposition to meaningful reform.

If there is a smoking gun in the battle over financial regulatory reform, the 2006 ABA memo is it….

In the weeks ahead, the Senate does not need to decide between safety and soundness and consumer protection.

But the ABA is right about one thing: The Senate does need to decide between banks and families.

Attorney barred in the District of Columbia and California currently looking for opportunities in the private and government sectors.  Specializes in ediscovery/litigation efficiency project management but can do straight litigation or litigation management.  Feel free to contact me with opportunities at progress@progresspolitics.com