The details are a bit convoluted, as the Obama Administration seeks to avoid a hostile Wall Street-owned Senate. But by all indications, this is a good thing.
President Obama will announce this week that Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law School professor who first proposed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will be named to a special position reporting to both him and to the Treasury Department and tasked with heading the effort to get the new federal agency standing, a knowledgeable Democrat told ABC News.
Warren's title will be Assistant to the President & Special Adviser to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Warren currently chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Assets Relief Program and has been seen by many on the Left as a force for greater accountability and transparency, and a check against the forces in the Obama administration more closely allied with the financial sector. Many officials in that sector eye her warily as too anti-business.
More details:
The move allows her to act as an interim head of the CFPB and will enable her to begin setting up the agency immediately and prevent the GOP from filibustering her nomination. Warren could serve until President Barack Obama nominates a permanent director to serve the five-year term -- a nomination he's not required to make for some time. Obama also could nominate her as the permanent director in the near future, a prospect that has been discussed among top aides, according to a person familiar with White House deliberations. Warren formally will be named as a special adviser reporting directly to Obama, and serving in a similar capacity to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, later this week.
Senator Chris Dodd has decided to exit the Senate as the asshole tool of an asshole Wall Street, and it's clear his marching orders are to oppose Warren at all costs.
Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd leaned on President Barack Obama on Thursday to appoint someone to permanently lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, arguing that Elizabeth Warren’s special advisory role does not go far enough.
“They need to send us a director though, a nominee, so the issue is no different today than it was yesterday,” the Connecticut Democrat said. “We need a nominee who can run the place. So I don’t know what their intentions are.”
Dodd, Wall Street, and Republicans fear that Warren will be too effective in building a consumer protection bureau that, you know, protects consumers. By all indications, this is a positive move by the White House, utilizing provisions in the law allowing for an interim head.
And note, we don't want her heading this board for the full five-year term. We'll want her back in Massachusetts in 2012 to take out accidental Republican Sen. Scott Brown and reclaiming that seat for a true progressive consumer champion. So the interim appointment is just about perfect.