The new Consumer Financial Protection agency will be a place you can go to with your complaints and they will be taken seriously, the White House said this afternoon during a conference call in which Consumerist took part. While, “It’s not totally worked out who’s going to be manning the 1-800 number,” said senior economic adviser Austan Goolsbee,

“The intention is very much that the industry, and the consumer, and the press, and the government will all know, look, this is the body that is in charge of if you have a complaint. You go there and they figure it out.”

Consumerist asked Mr. Goolsbee if even lower-end financial products, like payday loans and rent-to-own service, will fall under the CFPA’s purview. “Barring some special carveout…anything that is of material impact on consumer in the financial product space is fair game,” said Mr. Goolsbee.

The CFPA would consolidate consumer protection authority that is now spread out over seven different agencies, and not the central focus of any of them, into a new agency with independent rule-making authority and a presidential nominee as regulator.

It would represent, “The toughest strongest consumer protection we’ve ever had,” for financial products and services, Mr. Goolsbee said.

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