Protecting consumers: Cordray hits the ground running

Richard Cordray. Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com.

In the interval between the NH and SC primaries, the GOP is likely to turn its attention back to its efforts to undermine Obama’s recess appointment of Richard Cordray to direct the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That’s why Elizabeth Warren is rallying the troops to defend Cordray and the agency she founded.

I just got this email from the Warren campaign:

Virginia,

On the second day of a new job, most people are still filling out paperwork and finding the cafeteria.

But not Richard Cordray.

Just one day after President Obama appointed Richard to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- bypassing the Senate Republicans -- he got to work.

He made clear his intent to use his authority as Director to level the playing field for middle class families and to rein in the sorts of abusive lending practices that nearly brought down the economy.

With Richard Cordray on the job, consumers already are seeing a big difference. We want to show Rich we're with him, and Elizabeth is going to personally deliver our online card to him when she next sees him. If you haven't signed it yet, there's still time.

Please join Elizabeth and tell Richard Cordray we're with him all the way: Sign our online card in the next 24 hours and help send an important message of support.

Many outside analysts and observers expect there will be fierce legal challenges to Cordray's appointment from those who want him out.

Republicans are still reeling over their inability to block his nomination, and the big banks have a lot on the line with the new agency's success. We've also seen Wall Street continue to set new spending records hiring lawyers and lobbyists to shift attention away from their wrongdoing.

We've worked hard together to get this far. With Richard Cordray in place at the new consumer agency, we can start moving toward real accountability over the big banks and better protections for consumers.

Please join Elizabeth in telling Richard Cordray we stand with him in this important fight for middle class families and in showing the momentum behind his leadership.

The public is paying attention to this fight -- including thousands who signed our petition urging that Rich get this important job. Middle class people in Massachusetts and around this country are tired of getting hammered by the same characters time after time.

This is a big deal for everyone who thinks it's time for a level playing field that gives middle class families a fair chance to get ahead.

Thanks for your support,

Mindy Myers
Campaign Manager
Elizabeth for MA

Obama gives Richard Cordray a recess appointment as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Richard Cordray, photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

I received word this morning of Obama’s recent appointment of Richard Cordray as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in an email from Elizabeth Warren:

Virginia,

This is an important day.  Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau gets its first director -- and its full powers.  President Obama gave Richard Cordray a recess appointment that Republicans cannot block.

Please join me and tell Richard Cordray we're with him all the way: Click here to sign my online card now and deliver a strong message of support to an important advocate!  

For months, determined as ever to protect Wall Street and the big banks instead of you, Republicans stymied the consumer agency from doing its job. Republicans demanded changes that would weaken the agency and its ability to protect you, and they filibustered the nomination of Richard Cordray as its director.

The big banks were winning once again until today -- when President Obama gave Cordray a recess appointment!

This is a big deal for middle class families in Massachusetts and across our nation.

For more than a year, we've seen and heard reports exposing how some of America's largest financial institutions broke the law. Maybe that's why Wall Street continues to set new spending records hiring lobbyists to shift attention away from their wrongdoings.

As a result, those who broke our economic system haven't been subject to full scrutiny.  But with Richard Cordray in place at the CFPB, we can start moving toward real accountability over the big banks.

Please join me in celebrating the end of the Republican roadblock preventing the consumer agency from moving forward -- and tell Richard Cordray we stand with him in this important fight for middle-class families.

The public is paying attention to this fight -- including thousands who signed our petition urging that Rich get this position.  

We've worked hard together to get this far.  We should celebrate -- and keep right on working.  Let's show there's real momentum behind Cordray's leadership.

Thank you for being a part of this,

Elizabeth Warren

  

Washington’s loss is Harvard’s gain as Elizabeth Warren resumes her teaching position

Photo credits: avery.com

It’s Washington’s loss that Elizabeth Warren is resuming her teaching position at Harvard. Her high ethical standards, personal integrity, courageous leadership, and in-depth grasp of economic issues, well demonstrated in her creation of the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau, evidently made her a target of the GOP and Wall Street. 

Warren’s unpopular status with the alliance that brought about the great recession naturally compelled the Obama Administration to throw her under the bus instead of nominating her as director of the agency she founded. 

However, Warren’s admirers in the political arena are urging her to run for the Mass. senate seat in opposition to Republican Scott Brown in 2012.

Joseph Williams at Politico reports:

Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor credited with creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — and who drew constant flak from congressional Republicans and Wall Street for doing it — is heading back to Cambridge.

Warren, who served both as a White House adviser and adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the CPFB, will return to her teaching job at Harvard, the Treasury Department said Tuesday.It said that Raj Date will replace her as an adviser to Geithner, effective August 1.

The move comes a year after President Barack Obama tapped Warren to oversee the creation of a government agency established by Congress to guard consumers against financial products like subprime loans and high-interest credit cards.

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Elizabeth Warren is ready to name and shame?!

Elizabeth Warren testifies.

Good for Elizabeth Warren; she’s got plenty of adversaries who deserve to be named and shamed. Nancy Scola at the Atlantic writes:

Elizabeth Warren is ready to name and shame. After 10 long months spent crafting a brand-new federal agency in her image and likeness, years before that willing the institution into statutory existence, only to be passed over on Sunday in favor of Richard Cordray just as the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is moving out of beta, Warren, on a press call late yesterday afternoon, was eager to share her clarity on who's to blame for the especially precarious position the new federal-friend-to-the-American-consumer now finds itself in.

Those enemies of Warren, of the CFPB? Republicans, first and foremost, namely Senate Banking ranking member Richard Shelby (R-AL) and the forty three other Republican senators who signed a letter to Obama in May raising heck over the "unfettered authority" the CFPB had supposedly been granted by the Dodd-Frank Act, passed in the wake of the mortgage meltdown. That's no surprise. But Warren's also annoyed with the press for buying the GOP's story that it's simply a more efficient consumer advocate they're eager for, when really what Republicans want is for the CFPB to die an early death. She also blames her own political naiveté. She's been "too busy busting [her] tail" in starting an agency, she says, and didn't pay all that much attention to those inside the Beltway sharpening their knives. Some heard those noises over at 1600 Pennsylvania. Perhaps she's heard the chatter that Obama was more sold in public than in private on her eventual appointment as CFPB's first-ever director. But Warren gives Obama and fellow Democrats a pass.

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