Nearly three months after President Obama nominated Richard Cordray as director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the former Ohio Attorney General has gotten one step closer to filling that position after the Senate Banking Committee voted to approve the nomination. [More]
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CFPB Launches Credit Card Complaint Portal
By 7.22.11
Yesterday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finally took down its “Coming Soon” sign and hoisted the “Open For Business” banner. And as part of its grand opening celebration, the CFPB kicked things off with the launch of its credit card complaint portal. [More]
Poll: Overwhelming Majority Of Voters Want A Strong, Undiluted CFPB
By 7.19.11
While Republicans in the Congress and Senate continue to grouse about the structure of the newborn Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new poll indicates that those politicians’ actions may not be a reflection of their constituents’ desires. [More]
Obama To Nominate Former Ohio AG Cordray For CFPB Director
By 7.18.11
After months of speculation and fighting over the leadership of the newborn Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the White House has announced that President Obama will not nominate Elizabeth Warren for the directorship, but instead will go with former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray. [More]
Debt Collectors Out To Prove They Are Not All Zombie Bullies Who Want To Eat Your Face
By 6.13.11
For decades, U.S. debt collectors have plied their trade under the watchful but lazy eye of the Federal Trade Commission, which has the authority to go after the worst of the bunch but can’t create new rules governing these businesses. But later this summer, debt collectors will come under the supervision of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau… and that scares them, especially after complaints about debt collectors jumped 17% last year to 140,036. [More]
Elizabeth Warren: Mortgage Forms Should Be Comprehensible To Normal Human Beings
By 6.9.11
At yesterday’s White House Personal Finance Online Summit, Elizabeth Warren, Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, went into details about the still-nascent agency’s “Know Before You Owe” project and how the CFPB is working to simplify the documents that consumers are shown when shopping for a mortgage. [More]
House Committee Battles Elizabeth Warren Over Consumer Protection Bureau
By 5.24.11
At a hearing held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today, the committee’s GOP leadership debated Elizabeth Warren, the White House’s pick to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As the committee argued that new regulations are required to keep the watchdog agency from having “unchecked discretion” over financial matters, Warren responded that such efforts serve to “undermine the consumer bureau before it even begins its work of protecting American families.” [More]
Consumers Union: Americans Deserve A Financial Watchdog Not A Big Bank Lapdog
By 5.18.11
As some members of the Congress and Senate continue to do their best to neuter the still-nascent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, our benevolent benefactors at Consumers Union are asking the folks on Capitol Hill to not put a muzzle on the CFPB. [More]
House Committee Approves Legislation To Weaken Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
By 5.13.11
Because it would apparently really suck to have a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that could actually do anything to protect consumers, the House Financial Services Committee has given the thumbs-up to three pieces of legislation that would weaken the agency before its even born. [More]
Senate Republicans To Block Consumer Financial Protection Chief
By 5.6.11
Following their colleagues in the House, who earlier this week offered legislation that would weaken the powers of the planned Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, nearly all Republican Senators have sent a letter to President Obama vowing to block the confirmation of any nominee to head the new agency, unless there are “structural changes that will make the Bureau accountable to the American people.” [More]
House Subcommittee Approves Bills That Would Effectively Shackle Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
By 5.4.11
As we reported yesterday, a House of Representatives subcommittee was set to review various proposed bills that would effectively disarm the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau before it even had a chance to do any protecting of consumers. Sadly, but not surprisingly, all three bits of proposed legislation have been approved. [More]
Washington Already Considering Ways To Ruin Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
By 5.3.11
The still nascent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is already on its way to becoming the latest victim in Washington’s efforts to make sure American consumers have their voice taken away. Tomorrow, the House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit is scheduled to consider a number of bills that, if passed, would undermine the CFPB’s ability to protect consumers. [More]
Send Your Ideas To The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's New Website
By 2.3.11
ConsumerFinance.gov, the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new website, is live and in full effect. So is their Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. They want your suggestions and ideas so send ’em in! As they announced on their website their central role is “to make markets for consumer financial products and services work for America…The CFPB belongs to the people it serves. If you have suggestions, we want to hear them.” [More]
What's On Warren's Mind? Check Her Old Blog
By 9.17.10
If you’re looking for insight into what’s going on inside the mind of Elizabeth Warren, check out her blog. Before she became the new special adviser to President Obama, and probably the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau she designed, she was blogging on CreditSlips, a group blog by several academics on consumer credit, bankruptcy, mortgages, and the like. WSJ’s Mary Pilon rounds up some of her notable posts, like her final one, entitled, “Bullshit — Professionally Speaking,” on the subject of deceptive contract language. [More]
Elizabeth Warren Outlines Her Vision For Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
By 9.17.10
Hours after it was announced that Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren would be named a special advisor to President Obama in the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, she took to the White House blog to share the broad strokes about the new agency. [More]
Rap Video Pimps Elizabeth Warren For CFPA Head
By 8.20.10
A lot of folks are rooting for the smart, fierce and uncompromising Elizabeth Warren to head up the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. And now the cowboy rappers have thrown their 10-gallon hats in the ring. [More]
Consumer Advocate Says Protection Agency Should Be Like Harvard's Elizabeth Warren
By 7.19.10
Jeff Sovern at Public Citizen has a simple message for the Washington bureaucrats who will soon create the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency: Put Elizabeth Warren in charge and build the agency in her image.
Why Elizabeth Warren, you ask?
Auto Dealers Win Exemption From Financial Protection Bureau Oversight
By 6.25.10
Some shady auto dealers are known to fake financial docs to get customers approved for loans they can’t afford. They refer to senior citizens as “people with oxygen tanks” and even straight up steal money from their ATM account. So, good thing that they can afford good lobbyists, because in the final hours they succeeded in making it so the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau doesn’t apply to them. [More]
