Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

CLEVELAND — In a bold act of political defiance, President Obama installed Richard Cordray as head of a new consumer watchdog agency Wednesday, bypassing Republican opposition in the Senate that derailed his nomination last month. Obama cast the move as an effort to protect the interests of middle-class Americans who have suffered as a result of the Great Recession, which stemmed in part from abuses in the financial system. "I will not stand by while a minority in the Senate puts party ideology ahead of the people they were elected to serve," Obama told an enthusiastic crowd at Shaker Heights High School here.

I sympathize with Carlton S. Courtney [ letters , Dec. 16] regarding his difficult experience with mortgage modification. It is certainly true that a strong Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could have helped prevent some of our recent economic problems. But I think the complaint that "our federal government has demonstrated an inability to regulate the mortgage industry, with its failure to appoint a head of the newly established ... bureau" does not place the blame where it belongs.

We the people — the people who don't have the money to hire lobbyists — need a strong Consumer Financial Protection Bureau . But if we the people don't take action, the watchdog agency, which hasn't had a chance to really fight for us, will be stripped of much of its power by a group of Republican legislators trying to weaken it. We must object. We must jump into this fight. Write, e-mail or call your congressional representatives and tell them to let the bureau be. Forty-four Republican senators, in a letter to President Obama, threatened to hold up the nomination of anyone selected to head the new consumer bureau, regardless of party affiliation, unless certain changes on how the agency is structured are made.

Banking regulators are set to hand down tough new rules to govern short-term, high-interest loans that have been blamed for trapping some Americans in a cycle of debt, according to people familiar with the matter. The rules, which are slated to come out Thursday, could radically alter the operations of the small but growing number of banks, including Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp, that offer loans tied to anticipated direct deposits of salary, government benefits or other income. Critics say these products carry the same abusive high interest rates and balloon payments as the payday loans provided by storefront vendors.

An agitated President Obama accused congressional Republicans on Thursday of not standing up for ordinary Americans after the Senate derailed his nominee to head a new federal consumer protection agency. At a brief news conference, the president charged that his Republican adversaries were not acting "on the level" after they blocked, by filibuster, his appointment of former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau . "This makes no sense," Obama declared.

Federal spending cuts have the Washington region reeling with alarming job-loss projections. But there is a growth area where the government will actually need more qualified professionals: Financial regulation. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act has altered the responsibilities of the federal government, creating a new demand for talent in the region's financial regulatory centers. Here's a snapshot of the newly mandated agencies established to execute the legislation's 2,300 pages of new rules and directions: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau regulates consumer financial services, such as online banking, credit unions and mortgages as an independent office in the Federal Reserve.

This is part of the Post Live panel discussion ‘Kitchen Table Economics,' held April 16 at The Washington Post. View other videos from the discussion here. Gail Hillebrand Associate director of consumer education and engagement, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau One of the big things for kids to learn is, is it something I need or something I want, and is this something as a family we need or we want? Because it turns out all that conversation you heard on the first panel about "pay yourself first" is partly about being able to distinguish between the things we've got to have for our family and the things we'd really like to have and we're going to work toward.

Director, National Priorities, Consumer Action Consumer Action's director of national priorities and one of the organization's chief spokespersons, Linda Sherry joined the San Francisco-based national consumer education and advocacy group in 1994 from a background as a weekly newspaper reporter. Sherry, a nationally recognized consumer advocate, is an expert on credit and financial services pricing and practices and consumer rights. She responds regularly to requests for interviews and background information about consumer protection issues from the national and local media, Congress and federal regulators.

There can be unseemly exposure of the mind as well as of the body, as the progressive mind is exposed in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a creature of the labyrinthine Dodd-Frank legislation. Judicial dismantling of the CFPB would affirm the rule of law and Congress's constitutional role. The CFPB's director, Richard Cordray , was installed by one of Barack Obama's spurious recess appointments when the Senate was not in recess. Vitiating the Senate's power to advise and consent to presidential appointments is congruent with the CFPB's general lawlessness.

President Obama has decided to name former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is set to launch this week. In doing so he bypassed Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard professor who has been one of the nation's leading champions for reform on behalf of those ripped off by high credit rates and shady mortgages. Not to mention the bureau was her idea. It was Warren's brainchild to put a "cop on the beat" in the wake of the epic failure by federal regulators who fiddled while the economy tanked in 2008.