Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Senior citizens are being lured into riskier investments — and often outright scams — as carefully laid retirement plans have been scuttled by five years of low interest rates. Government regulators and advocacy groups say unscrupulous dealers are taking advantage of a growing fear among seniors that they will run out of money in their final years of life. That's in large part because many seniors have parked their cash in safe investments, such as government bonds, where returns have barely kept pace with inflation.

The regulatory, administrative state, which progressives champion, is generally a servant of the strong, for two reasons. It responds to financially powerful and politically sophisticated factions. And it encourages rent-seekers to exploit opportunities for concentrated benefits and dispersed costs (e.g., agriculture subsidies confer sums on large agribusinesses by imposing small costs on 316 million Americans). Such government inevitably means executive government and the derogation of the legislative branch, both of which produce exploding government debt.

Got a beef with your mortgage company or loan servicer? Lots of people do, and thousands of them have been turning to a federal complaint hotline for action — or at least a quick response from the lender. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau opened up its hotline files to public view last week, and the contents are startling: Though the complaint window is open for various financial disputes — credit cards, student loans, credit reporting agencies, bank loans to consumers — by far the biggest source of complaints is home mortgages.

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.

Associate Director of Consumer Education and Engagement, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Gail Hillebrand serves as the Associate Director of the Consumer Education and Engagement Division of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Within the Education and Engagement division are the Office of Financial Education, the Engagement Office, the Office of Service Member Affairs, the Office for the Financial Protection of Older Americans, the Office of Students which includes the Student Loan Ombudsman, and the Office of Financial Empowerment.

Democrats on the Senate banking committee on Tuesday approved the nomination of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — just as they did nearly two years ago. Clearing the committee, even by a slim 12-10 margin, was a minor feat. The real hurdle will come on the Senate floor. Cordray's nomination remains at the center of a larger political fight over the structure of the watchdog agency and, although the Democrats have 55 seats in the Senate, a single Republican could filibuster a final vote.

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.

President Obama on Thursday re-nominated Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, all but assuring a fight with Senate Republicans who oppose the agency's sweeping powers to regulate the financial services industry. Cordray, 53, took the helm of the consumer agency in late 2011 through a recess appointment . His term expires at the end of the year unless he wins approval. But Senate staffers say Obama's end run has poisoned the waters for Cordray.

It is one of the most common sense regulations in the works by the government's new consumer watchdog, but one that stands to radically change the nation's housing market: the qualified mortgage rule. On Thursday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will finalize the criteria that lenders will use to determine whether a borrower can repay a home loan. The rule is aimed at protecting consumers from some of the worst abuses of the mortgage meltdown but could make it more difficult or expensive for some home buyers to get a loan.

Anyone who has ever applied for a loan or tried to rent an apartment knows the importance of having a good credit score. Yet there is little understanding of how those scores are devised. A new paper released Thursday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lifts the veil off of credit reporting, revealing that the way consumers use the plastic in their wallets weighs heaviest on their scores. While that's not too surprising, considering that Americans own nearly 610 million credit cards, the finding does cast new light on the gravity of failing to keep up with those accounts.