Excerpt: "The financial industry lined up against Warren. Bankers said a Warren-run agency would restrict new products just when companies are seeking to replace profits squeezed by the new financial rules."
Elizabeth Warren will not lead the agency she envisioned, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (photo: Mary F. Calvert/NYT/Redux)
Obama Bows to Pressure, Passes Over Warren
17 July 11
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Obama picks former Ohio AG Cordray to lead consumer agency; GOP set to oppose.
eigniting a partisan fight over banking regulations, President Barack Obama intends to nominate former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to lead a consumer protection bureau that was a central feature of a law overhauling the rules that govern the financial sector.
Obama plans to announce the nomination formally on Monday, the White House said Sunday. Republicans immediately threatened to block Cordray's Senate confirmation.
In choosing Cordray, Obama bypassed Elizabeth Warren, a favorite of consumer groups, who has been assembling the agency as a special adviser to the White House and to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
The agency will officially begin its oversight and regulatory work on July 21. Its role is to be a government watchdog over mortgages, credit cards and other forms of lending.
"Richard Cordray has spent his career advocating for middle-class families, from his tenure as Ohio's attorney general, to his most recent role as heading up the enforcement division at the CFPB and looking out for ordinary people in our financial system," Obama said in a statement.
Warren, who is considered the architect of the consumer bureau, faced stiff Republican opposition in the Senate and would have had a difficult time wining confirmation.
The financial industry lined up against Warren. Bankers said a Warren-run agency would restrict new products just when companies are seeking to replace profits squeezed by the new financial rules.
But Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, said Republicans would block Cordray as well unless Obama seeks changes in the agency.
"Until President Obama addresses our concerns by supporting a few reasonable structural changes, we will not confirm anyone to lead it," Shelby said. "No accountability, no confirmation."
Cordray's elevation from enforcement chief to director raises a separate concern for the industry: Some fear the agency will launch early enforcement actions designed to raise its public profile. Treasury officials said that's unlikely, because the agency's enforcement division still is making key decisions about policy and procedure.
Cordray, 52, is considered a Warren ally and has been working with her as director of enforcement for the agency.
"He will make a stellar director," Warren said of Cordray.
Republicans fought fiercely against the creation of the bureau last year and have been trying to place restrictions on the agency. In May, all Senate Republicans joined in a letter to Obama threatening to withhold their support for any nominee to the position if the White House didn't seek significant changes to the agency.
Among the changes would be to replace a single director with a board and to make the bureau's finances subject to congressional approval.
Though Democrats control the Senate, Republicans could block Cordray's appointment through a filibuster.
"I remain hopeful that those who want to cripple this consumer bureau will think again and remember that the financial crisis - and the recession and job losses that it sparked - began one lousy mortgage at a time," Warren said in a statement Sunday.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who shepherded the financial regulation bill through the House last year as the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said he regretted that Warren had "fallen victim to such wholly unjustified political attacks."
But Frank praised Cordray and said, "There is no excuse for Senate Republicans to refuse to confirm Richard Cordray given his clear qualifications for this job."
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which had backed Warren, issued a statement supporting Cordray.
"With her track record of standing up to Wall Street and fighting for consumers, Elizabeth Warren was the best qualified to lead this bureau that she conceived - and we imagine Richard Cordray would agree," said the committee's co-founder, Stephanie Taylor. "That said, Rich Cordray has been a strong ally of Elizabeth Warren's and we hope he will continue her legacy of holding Wall Street accountable."
But consumer advocate and one-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader called bypassing Warren "an act of political cowardliness by President Obama."
"Elizabeth Warren apparently is just too good, too smart, too able to arouse the just concerns of millions of American families over the need to put the law-and-order wood to the corporate criminals, defrauders and reckless speculators," Nader said.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner credited Warren for recruiting staff for the consumer bureau and for her efforts to simplify mortgage disclosure, improve credit card transparency and protect military families from lending abuses.
Warren wants to remain a public advocate on consumer issues including abuses by mortgage servicing companies that have foreclosed illegally on military families and others, according to people familiar with her thinking.
She has felt constrained from speaking out as a White House appointee and looks forward to the freedom she will enjoy when she returns to being a Harvard Law School professor, said those familiar with her plans. They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
In pushing for changes in financial regulations last year, Obama focused on the popular appeal of a consumer bureau, which he had proposed as an independent agency. It was during that debate that Obama referred to bankers as "fat cats," a characterization he has since abandoned.
The regulatory overhaul was a response to the financial crisis of 2008 that helped plunge the country into a recession.
In a compromise, the consumer agency was placed within the Federal Reserve, but will act autonomously from the central bank.
In his statement, Obama thanked Warren "for her many years of impassioned leadership, and her fierce defense of a simple idea: ordinary people deserve to be treated fairly and honestly in their financial dealings."
Obama also said, "This agency was Elizabeth's idea, and through sheer force of will, intelligence, and a bottomless well of energy, she has made, and will continue to make, a profound and positive difference for our country."
AP Business Writer Daniel Wagner contributed to this report.
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Re. hope and change, OhBombAh's kicked us more than twice, so shame on him.
If he does veto it, my guess is that he is pretty sure his veto will be voted down and it will go on the books as Law -- to threaten us all until God himself takes this horrid Congress down. Where IS conscience in everything he has done in the past three years? And if he is indeed threatened, or in fear for his family -- not at all surprising -- then why does he not just say so and step down? Must he take America with him?
IMO, there's not a sincere bone in his body. Either he says he won't sign it but will, or will oppose it for the wrong reasons, (to make it worse) or to make himself look good (to the hopelessly naive) for awhile, so they can go back to sleep.
Don't buy any of this. Its a psy-opps, a distraction. The state wants these powers and its going to get it unless we give them something else to think about, (and no, not elections... sigh).
Thank you all for willingness to care to see through the garbage. With people like you amongst us, there's still hope.
NEVER VOTE REPUBLICAN !!
NEVER VOTE REPUBLICAN !!
This is a craven ploy, plain and simple.
Read Glenn Greenwald at salon.com.
According to Greenwald, Obama's objections have nothing to do with Constitutional issues over the rights of U.S. citizens.
Obama's argument is, essentially, that: it is not the role of Congress to legislate the President's authority to designate non-U.S.-citize ns AND/OR U.S. Citizens as terrorists or enemy combatants, to be detained indefinitely and without due-process by the military apparatus, because the President, without Congressional legislation, already has that authority.
His issue against this legislation, just as it would be for GW Bush/Cheney, is because of the idea that the President's existing executive power precludes -- or renders superfluous -- statutory authority, so he is making this threat as negotiating leverage for that concession.
Obama takes his blind, ignorant, apologist, fool supporters for granted.
He (and rightfully so) gives them no credit for intellectual capacity to realize the irrelevance of their opinions by standing by him and/or supporting (or not supporting) his decisions.
They are all mindless numskulls with nothing to say, nor do they stand for anything.
CTPatriot also uses a word that I have been meaning to use, but I keep forgetting -- to describe the Obama apologist's reaction to anything that triggers their Republican-fear ing (and I would say, lack of) sensibilities; the word is reflexive.
So even a Republican can occasionally do something correctly.
Or do you just so reflexively support him that you could care less about the actual meaning or outcome of his actions? If Obama does it, it must be good, right? How are you different from what we once called "Loyal Bushies"?
Not only do the GOP/TP want President Obama out of the W.H. BECAUSE he's a Democrat -- but there is no doubt in my mind that the GOP has racism in their agenda. Newt came right out and said he wanted to put the children in "those" districts (the working poor) to work as janitors helpers bc they have no role model! Other examples are clear.
When the African Americans fought for equal rights - they did not come in under "equal right protection" - but under something called "equal social right protection" - and you're smart enough to figure out the difference!
The war on drugs is designed to punish the black/Hispanic districts because I know white districts where the users/dealers are not told to empty pockets and even the drugs targeted by police are different (White = cocain) (Black=crack cocain)
Although we know the minorities have suffered more than other groups (e.g. jobs & houses especially) - they will not be the only groups to lose under GOP leadership - all of the 99erswill lose. That is 100% for sure because the GOP candidates have told us so. You just have to listen to them.
The GOP priority is not jobs
2012 - register early + mail-in ballots VOTE DEM VOTE OBAMA (BarbaraK)
Neither one of these corrupt parties is going to change that dynamic. The day you recognize that is the day you will stop spouting bullshit about "the art of the possible".
"It would require that terrorism suspects be held by the military, and either be tried by US military commissions or in some cases be held indefinitely.
The White House sees the provisions as a constraint on the administration' s ability to transfer prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to the United States, try them in civilian court, or even transfer them to foreign countries."
So they're blowing smoke, really. No veto for detention, just veto "if you don't play ball ABOUT HOW to detain" my way.
This passive-aggress ive stuff is what we have been used to getting from Obama. I saw the movie "Blow" last night for the first time, and it reminded me about how people in power play both ends against the middle, gerrymander their propaganda to look like they're gonna do something FOR the people, but...NAH...not happening.
Article a day or so again on RSN said it all: Obama' just not into us...for real.
N.
But the herd will buy anything if the $multibillion-p rofit news media says its so.
However this all represents hills and valleys of degree in the advance of the Police State -or Corporate ditto- it's all the same.
Ob's real test if he survives to be president with a decent majority, will be how he conducts his second term (Gawd forbid any of the current crop of chowder-heads on the right even comes close to being elected -but never underestimate the "Idiotocracy" quotient of the American once-every-four -years electorate!
Those who end their comments with 'Never Vote Republican' do not address the real problem. The real problem is and has been the uselessness and cowardice of the Democrats in Congress who are apparently just as corrupt as their G.O.P. counterparts. Only THREE Democratic Senators voted against the final bill here. The rest, including my own state's Boxer and Feinstein, voted with those who would throw away my constitutional rights.
I'm not voting for any Republican I can see at this point, but I am also never again voting for Democrats who betray our trust, and there are a lot of them.
"Sophistry" which Socrates used in his famous dialogues(writt en by Plato) to demonstrate the antithesis of Greek Ethics which is based on Universal Truth.
He's doing the daddy act. He's telling the country he can either make your life h*ll or he can give you paradise-and you'd BETTER choose the right side or he will punish you.
Obama is a slave that thinks he's the slavemaster.
Twenty dollars says there will suddenly be (Israel placed) an "uprising" here in America that makes obama reconsider.
Then he will drag this act back out, tell us we were naughty, and punish us.
Roosevelt,Kansa s City Star, May 7,1918
Remember who elected you and why.
We don't care if you're sincere or agree with us. We just want you to do the job you were hired to do. The repug party didn't hire you. We did. Do you want us to show up at the polls next year?
Stand OUR ground. This is bigger than you.
Nay IA Harkin, Thomas [D]
Nay UT Lee, Mike [R]
Nay OR Merkley, Jeff [D]
Nay KY Paul, Rand [R]
Nay VT Sanders, Bernard
Nay OR Wyden, Ron [D]
www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s2011-218&sort=vote
When there is a clause, as was in this defense bill, that Americans can be held without charge or trial threatened one of our basic fundamental rights promised in our Constitution.
But should read: It would require that terrorism suspects be held by the military, and either be tried by US military commissions or in most cases be held indefinitely if desired by the captors, all without the (supposedly) Contstitutional guarantees of Due Process of Law.
Never Vote Republican.
Mr. President Veto this Bill.
If you don't want a complete police state then get over your anger at Obama.
Him staying in office and voting out the republicans in house and senate is our only hope.
Give the guy some credit for trying. He is our only hope.
You don't think one of those bozo candidates would be better do you?