Richard Cordray Announces Aggressive Agenda for Consumer Financial Protection Agency

By Joan McCarter, Daily Kos

06 January 12

usiness Insider has a profile of Richard Cordray, President Obama's recess appointee to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, answering the question of why Republicans and Wall Street are so afraid of him.

So what's the problem with Cordray? There are two, one is an old Washington problem, and the other is purely Wall Street's:

1. Republicans said they would never support anyone to head the CFPB - Period -that is, unless the White House made serious changes to the agency. (Politico)

2. He doesn't just go after Wall Street Institutions. He goes after individual executives as well.

They follow up with specific examples of how Cordray fought Wall Street as attorney general of Ohio. So he went into this with a strong track record and is hitting the ground running. His speech today at the Brookings Institution won't allay any Wall Street fears.

"The consumer bureau will make clear that there are real consequences to breaking the law,” Mr. Cordray, who had been in charge of enforcement at the agency, said in remarks prepared for at a speech at the Brookings Institution.

“We have given informants and whistle-blowers direct access to us,” he said. “We took over a number of investigations from other agencies in July, and we are pursuing some investigations jointly with them. We have also started our own investigations. Some may be resolved through cooperative efforts to correct problems. Others may require enforcement actions to stop illegal behavior.”

Cordray will be targeting "shadow banks," lenders outside the banking industry, as well. That could mean, for example, far more oversight of the student loan industry, protecting students from toxic financial products. That also means payday lenders and non-bank mortgage brokers, businesses that previously weren't really under any federal jurisdiction.

This quick and forceful roll-out, Greg Sargent points out, is smart strategy for the White House. Cordray is making clear that there's now a cop on the beat to protect working families from financial predators, something that couldn't happen as long as the agency didn't have a director. That means that Republicans, in so shrilly screeching in opposition to the appointment, are not only defending governmental gridlock, but doing so expressly to protect Wall Street. Both are losing positions for the GOP.