Agency's Website seeks consumer suggestions, complaints, promises vigorous enforcement
of ConsumerAffairs
She doesn't look much like
J. Edgar Hoover but Elizabeth Warren might be reading from his
playbook. Hoover quickly built the FBI into a high-profile
crime-fighting agency back in the 1920s, and Warren appears to be
on the same track with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau(CFPB).
The outspoken Harvard law professor, who is setting up the agency as an aide to President Obama, hosts a video on the bureau's new Web site, asking for suggestions from the public on what the agency's top priorities should be.
“For the first time in many years, we have the opportunity to create a brand new consumer agency from the ground up,” she said. “We want to make sure that you are with us all the way while we build it.”
The bureau is the centerpiece of the financial overhaul enacted last year. While it won't have G-men chasing bank robbers down the street, it's expected to take an aggressive stance against predatory lenders and misbehaving financial institutions.
Warren has already made it clear that the bureau will be aggressively going after lending institutions who abuse members of the armed services and violate the terms of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, as J.P. Morgan Chase admitted doing last month.
Military might
One of Warren's first
appointments was Holly Petraeus, the wife of Gen. David H.
Petraeus, top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan, to lead the bureau's
Office for Service Member Affairs.
Besides policing payday lenders, mortgage lenders and others notorious for abusing service members, Petraeus is expected to turn a sharp eye towards car dealers, who managed to lobby their way out of the bureau's jurisdiction but could still feel the sting of negative publicity and future legislation if Petraeus documents widespread misconduct.
The CFPB will “be a cop on the beat to patrol the consumer financial services markets,” Warren said. It will set up a consumer complaints section on its Website, allowing consumers to submit complaints about financial products and services.
“Financial companies that break the laws will be held accountable. That’s fair to customers, and it is fair to the lenders who play by the rules and work to provide real value for their customers,” she said.
Though not a career politician, Warren has proven herself nimble at navigating the treacherous shoals of Washington. Her appointment of Holly Petraeus silenced Republican critics who had vowed to extinguish the agency.
Her appointment of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, a moderate Democrat, to head enforcement efforts answered critics who had feared that ideological zealots would be in charge of enforcement.
Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which led an aggressive lobbying campaign against creation of the agency, has shifted its attention to offering feedback on how the agency develops, citing small businesses' fear that the CFPB will be covering many of the same issues as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).