Richard Cordray

President Obama exceeded his constitutional authority by making appointments when the Senate was on a break last year, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The court's broad ruling would sharply limit the power that presidents throughout history have used to make recess appointments in the face of Senate opposition and inaction. A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit flatly rejected the Obama administration's rationale for appointing three members of the...

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), chairman of the Financial Services Committee, has told Richard Cordray not to bother. This is part of the recent evidence that government is getting some adult supervision. Barack Obama used a recess appointment to make Cordray director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But a federal circuit court has declared unconstitutional three other recess appointments made the same day because the Senate was not in recess. So Hensarling has told Cordray not to testify before his committee:...

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...

Richard Cordray resumed a familiar position Tuesday: defense. In his semi-annual report to Congress, Cordray, the acting head of the government's consumer watchdog agency, defended the bureau's vast efforts to track how Americans shop for mortgages and use credit cards. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is buying anonymous data and requesting records from banks on more than 10 million Americans to gain greater insight into consumer behavior and the financial marketplace.

President Obama sidestepped the objections of congressional Republicans and gave Richard Cordray a recess appointment to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). As David Nakamura and Felicia Somnez reported : 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...

Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has been incubating at the Treasury Department for the past year, assumes its independence. In selecting Richard Cordray to head the CFPB, President Obama has chosen an articulate, dedicated professional whose well- regarded record has earned him the opportunity to serve the American people. As Ohio's attorney general, Cordray cracked down on big, mortgage- lending banks for constructing what he described as a " business model built on fraud . " He fought...

President Obama will nominate former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, sidestepping Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, who envisioned the agency and spent the past year setting it up, the White House said Sunday. Cordray, who lost his bid for reelection in November, is already at the agency as director of enforcement. The bureau, which will police financial products such as credit cards and mortgages, will officially open its...

The tall, soft-spoken man pad­ding around the fifth floor of 1801 L St. — often not wearing shoes and occasionally quoting Shakespeare — seems at first more like a college professor than a hard-charging enforcer. But he holds what soon could become a powerful post in Washington's changing financial regulatory landscape, a prospect that has heartened consumer advocacy groups and deepened the concerns of an already skeptical financial industry. Just months...

P resident Obama's attempt to unilaterally appoint three people to seats on the National Labor Relations Board and Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (after the Senate blocked action on his nomination) is more than an unconstitutional attempt to circumvent the Senate's advise-and-consent role. It is a breathtaking violation of the separation of powers and the duty of comity that the executive owes to Congress. Yes, some prior recess appointments have been...

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), chairman of the Financial Services Committee, has told Richard Cordray not to bother. This is part of the recent evidence that government is getting some adult supervision. Barack Obama used a recess appointment to make Cordray director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But a federal circuit court has declared unconstitutional three other recess appointments made the same day because the Senate was not in recess. So Hensarling has told Cordray...

Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is being barred from testifying before the House Financial Services Committee until he is confirmed by the Senate. Committee Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) sent a letter to the consumer bureau on Monday saying Cordray's recess appointment places his authority in question. In January, a federal appeals court ruled that President Obama's recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were...

For more than a decade, four of the nation's largest mortgage insurers paid millions of dollars in kickbacks to home lenders in exchange for business, raising insurance prices for consumers, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Thursday. The consumer watchdog agency fined Genworth Mortgage Insurance Corp., United Guaranty Corp., Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corp. and Radian Guaranty Inc. a total of $15.4 million for an alleged scheme that the bureau said was a common practice in...

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...

WILL SENATE Democrats give into temptation and smash the filibuster, after all? The Senate just got through reforming some of its arcane — but intensely disputed — rules that allow a minority to hold up the country's business, and TPM's Brian Beutler reports that already Democrats are thinking of changing them again . But Republicans can easily end talk of further limiting minority rights in the chamber. They just need to start using those rights more responsibly. In January, Senate leaders struck a...

For all the rumblings about Mary Jo White's ties to big interests on Wall Street , some of the most revelatory comments that emerged from her Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday had to do with her recreational habits. "She apparently indulged a fondness for motorcycle riding," Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said when introducing White at the hearing. "And despite her [short] physical stature, was a fierce competitor in the Women's Basketball League in New York. " The hearing was a...

Mary Jo White pledges a get-tough-on-Wall Street approach and swift action on pending regulations if confirmed as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to testimony she plans to deliver at her Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday. Since President Obama nominated White in January, some critics have questioned her resolve to crack down on Wall Street firms after years of defending them as a white-collar lawyer. Others have balked at her lack of regulatory experience . ...

Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is being barred from testifying before the House Financial Services Committee until he is confirmed by the Senate. Committee Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) sent a letter to the consumer bureau on Monday saying Cordray's recess appointment places his authority in question. In January, a federal appeals court ruled that President Obama's recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were...

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...

Any resistance to the confirmation of Mary Jo White as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission is not likely to follow the usual script, with Republicans trying to land a devastating blow as Democrats work to protect the White House nominee. In fact, when White appears before a Senate committee for her confirmation hearing on Tuesday, some of the tougher questions are expected to come from Democrats concerned about her close ties to Wall Street. Given her distinguishedlegal career defending some...

Four years ago, Elizabeth Warren was a Harvard Law professor crusading for the creation of a consumer protection agency to police the abusive practices that harmed millions of Americans during the financial crisis. Now that Warren has taken office as a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, she is fighting from inside the system to keep the upstart Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's power intact as her Republican colleagues vow to block the confirmation of CFPB director Richard Cordray.