For a primer on what a collosal criminal/idiot Geithner is, the gang at Baselinescenario.com has provided a comprehensive breakdown.

“Barr said. “She’s been working closely with me and Secretary Geithner for a year and half to push for this consumer protection bureau. I believe and Secretary Geithner believes that she’s exceptionally well-qualified to run it.”

Thanks for staying on this and all of the work that you do.

We should keep signing this petition. Just in case

http://act.boldprogressives.org/cms/sign/petition_warren/?source=dkos1

And keep contacting the White House with our support for Warren

Who does the selection and does the position report to that person? Does the selection have to be confirmed? Thanks.

Dave: good thread, but with this preznint, I think there’s enough wiggle room around that “extremely well qualified” rating, to drive an offshore drilling platform through.

And, as we all know, it aint what Geithner wants: it’s what Wall Street wants. (Not that there’s much difference…)

BTW; let’s get GEITHNER saying it, in public. :o)

Too many “misspokes” that can be “missspoked”.

Don’t hold your breath on a recess appointment for a consumer friendly head of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Remember Dawn Johnsen, fierce advocate for accountability and the rule of law, had her nomination for OLC languish in the nether world of White House non-support for months until she, at RahmObama request, withdrew her bid

Sounds as if the foundations of this agency will be underfunded sufficiently to hobble it no matter the titular honcho.

I applaud your effort and information. To me this sounds more like a non denial denial. Now maybe it’s the seasoned cynic pessimist within me but answers like, “I don’t know where that report come from” doesn’t mean it didn’t come from within. Maybe this person is out of the loop or just playing politics with this cute answer. Plus saying,”she’s well qualified is terrific” doesn’t necessarily mean that they want her in that position it means just what they said. Again another non denial denial. And maybe that’s just me…the seasoned, fool me once shame on you fool me twice won’t get fooled again. This is politics after all. I guess I don’t trust anything from these people. Sorry I just don’t.

Please note how this game is played.

Geithner is venal and corrupt (an errand boy for his Wall Street masters), but not totally stupid.
He will continue to avow his support for Warren in public. Unfortunately, somebody has now leaked the real game that’s going on (probably with the connivance of political “genius” Rahm Emmanuel) to stab her in the back.

Why? Even if they can’t pull it off in the face of public outrage, Rahm and Tim, in preparation for Election 2012, can show the Street that they’re responsive to their “concerns”.

Question: if Warren is in a position under Geithner will that limit her? remember how they did not want this as an agency that stood alone. They want the ability to shut down things Wall Street doesn’t like.
If Warren doesn’t get the job she can keep attacking verbally vs having to toe treasury’s line.

We probably should say we don’t want her then Rahm in his knee-jerk reaction of annoyance with anything the “effin’ retarded” left wants will advise “You got Me!” Obama to appoint her. Then defund her because 13 bankers will stand in the Treasury Secretary’s office who are saying: “…they say if you go forward with this you will cause [a] wors[er] financial crisis since ['08].”
http://baselinescenario.com/2009/05/26/derivatives-regulation-brooksley-born/

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows
[Leonard Cohen]

Warren is smarter than Geithner and Emmanuel put together. Not as ruthless but with the public behind Warren maybe that could smother out the greed and ruthlessness that both Geithner and Emmanuel have exhibited

Everybody knows but some of us keep hopin and pushin

Geithner is afraid to have a more qualified person looking over his shoulder.

Eloquent and exactly correct! Thank you!

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

Michael Whitney has a fresh cross-post up: California Democratic Party to Vote on Prop 19 Endorsement; Here’s Why to Vote Yes

Question: if Warren is in a position under Geithner will that limit her?

It is my understanding that the CFPB will be housed at the Fed. So she would be under Bernanke. It’s important to remember that the CFPB came out of Congress pretty thoroughly gutted. Also I am not sure if it will have much of a budget.

Absolutely we should get it from Geithner on the record. It’s good to have it from Barr, though.

Geithner is afraid to have a more qualified person looking over his shoulder.

Probably why he made such a good protégé of Larry Summers.

The bureau is placed in the Federal Reserve, I guess it would temporarily be in Treasury. So not really “under Geithner.” And it’s supposed to have an independent director serving at the pleasure of the President and an independent budget.

However, where Geithner does have authority is with the systemic risk council, which has some oversight (though they need a super-majority of the council to trigger it) over CFPB rulemaking.

But we know that, when Obama cares about implementing a tent-pole piece of legislation, he’ll recess appoint. See Don Berwick Dawn Johnsen.

Sorry, DD. I’m thinking that someone slipped up and that we weren’t supposed to be talking about this for a few more weeks. Instead now they have to go back and defend their ostensible position- We really like Warrren! and the eventual act of throwing her overboard will just become more complicated but not impossible.

I really hope you’re right and I’m wrong.

It was weakened in the sense of possible OCC or systemic risk council pre-emption and the auto dealer exemption. On mortgages, on payday lending, on all sorts of consumer financial transactions it has pretty broad authority, which will (like everything in this bill) be shaped by the regulator. I don’t think “thoroughly gutted” applies to this piece of the bill, though it does elsewhere. And I’ve hardly been a slavish defender of the WH or Congress on this.

I’d be very happy to end up wrong on this but, history suggests that Geithner and Obama want team players. If Warren gets the nod it seems likely that she will have to agree to some changes with respect to media sit-downs that point out Administration, the Fed and Treasury mistakes at the very least.

I agree that Michael Barr could be playing word games, claiming that Ms. Warren is ideally suited for the job, were she Obama’s top pick for it, without commenting on Geithner’s disdain for her and opposition to her appointment. He is nevertheless putting himself and his boss – and Obama, and Obama – in a highly embarrassing position if she isn’t appointed, or worse, loses out to a Liz Fowler or Jamie Gorelick.

Elizabeth Warren and Liz Fowler do seem similarly situated. (If one can ignore their divergent attitudes toward the public, consumer protection, and personally profiting from government service by spiking the work of government in favor of potential, lucrative employers.) That is, both crafted, advocated and pushed extremely hard for the very gubmint program each might now be asked to run.

Obama will have lots of ‘splainin’ to do if he picks someone besides the esteemed Elizabeth Warren, not that the MSM will care or listen.

I think it’s more than whether someone is a “team player”. Obama seems to have as much of an ideological and personality vetting process in place as Bush.

What you cite alone would qualify as thoroughly gutted, but there’s more. Originally, the CFPB was supposed to have the authority to require financial institutions to offer plain vanilla, easy to understand financial products (especially mortgages) as an alternative to whatever else they were pushing. That was the first thing gone. Pre-emption is a pretty big deal because it forces states to go along with weaker federal rules.

We have a Consumer Financial Protection Agency with weak powers over mortgages and none over car buying. These are the two biggest purchases most Americans make. It is shunted off to somewhere at the Fed. Why do this if it is supposed to be independent? And its budget is anybody’s guess. Now the Obama Administration is coming out and in no uncertain terms saying they don’t want a strong head for it.

So yes, this says gutted to me and smother the rest.

I agree except that a good team player never makes the stars look bad. A good team player will always take a hit to protect the franchise.

back up specifically “weak powers over mortgages.” There are bans on liar loans, no-doc loans, yield spread premiums, no-money-down loans, and about a dozen other bad predatory lending tactics. Brad Miller, who has been working on this since the day he entered Congress, said in no uncertain terms that this includes every single thing he’s advocated over the years.

Be specific.

Nor will the truly faithful ask for an explanation. The outsiders with a progressive world view won’t get a chance to ask questions and they don’t have an army of lobbyists.

It’s be shocking if Geithner didn’t oppose Warren. After all, he’s Tim Geithner.

In any case, it seems likely that the pro-Warren people put the Geithner v. Warren story out there, in order to turn her into a cause. Well done!

One more point: it’s funny that so many people (Kossacks) are expressing outraged incredulity at the claim that Geithner might not want Warren. During the debate on finance reform, the Obama admin just did Wall Street’s bidding, fighting Brown-Kaufmann, the strong derivative lingo, and the effort to control executive compensation. Opposing Warren is small potatoes.

MODS: The link at comment #1 is seriously broken. The correct link is simply Baselinescenario.com insted of that concatenation of words. Copy and paste error, I think.

Obama should ask himself: which is going to make me more popular with the electorate, siding with Geithner or siding with Warren? The question answers itself.

Frankly, I was suspicious of the earlier, unsourced huffpo piece. It read like the author or source were simply out to troll liberals.

This question about Warren came up around President Ben Nelson’s “discomfort” at who would run this new agency, and given his role as a WH front man in the great HCR swindle, it would not be surprising were he to try to scuttle her as well.

I consider Elizabeth Warren to be one of the increasingly few bright spots in this administration, and certainly one of the very few (only?) in regards to their economic team. When I see her on TV she is uniformly credible, straightforward, and believably sincere in a way the Geithners et al. could never achieve (no doubt because they are none of those things).

Should the WH decide to pull a Dawn Johnsen style “oh no, we really want her but Presidents Nelson and Baucus et al. just won’t let us!” they may as well just come out and admit that their actual economic plan is Reaganism II: Supply-side Boogaloo.

Obama wants nothing that annoys Nelson or the GOP or any corporation or Wall Street or the military or any rich person – but other than the above he is not a wimp or a con-job.

Warren would be out of character for him to appoint, so he would only do so if the plan to gut the authority of the commission was agreed to – but then at that point he would be afraid to tell her of his gutting the job via Tim’s best efforts to limit her authority, lest she refuse the position and go public.

He is not only a wimp, he is a liar and sneaky and just politically not nice – indeed GOP lite – but he is a great father and human being.

as to bill wording I agree – this part was not totally gutted -

but the Fed could have stopped the crisis from being a crisis – and that was possible without the SEC doing anything. And Tim’s non-regulation no doubt pleased Greenspan (the “boss” despite the NY Fed being owned by the Banks and not a part of the gov), but it does not suggest he is into cooperating with or pushing regulation efforts.

And these things’ results will vary with the effort put into them (see Greenspans’ destruction despite Fed authority to stop the problem – because he believed in a self regulating market).

OK – I’m confused – what regulatory authority over product design in mortgages does the CFPB have? They can of course “study and report”, but ability to say no to anything is not something I recall them being given (the Fed must work out how they will inforce – or Greenspan like refuse to inforce – those bans on various practices and designs you and Brad Miller mentioned, but I do not recall the authority for enforcement being in the CFPB – except as a member of the larger “risk” board).

Governance is not a sport. Sometimes it’s the “stars” who need to take a hit – or risk taking criticism for being a competent leader – in order to do the public’s business.

Beyond that, almost all government decisions are teamed, which means they are the outcome of massive input. If that all comes from one perspective, with a mind to what’s good for only the stars or “the team”, then no vectors shift the actual direction of flight. Veering off course and away from what promotes the common wealth is inevitable.

AFAIK, the rules on predatory lending are embedded in the actual law, and not subject to interpretation. Enforcement is obviously the key, which is why the directorship of CFPB is so important. If Alan Greenspan actually enforced laws on the books about subprime we would have had a much smaller crisis.

I totally agree – Greenspan stopped Clinton on the savings plan as an addition to – not a replacement for – Social Security, and stopped derivatives regulation in 98.

And I agree as to the Director being important for that reason – an active ready to regulate director – an opposite to Greenspan – is needed. But as to the regulatory set up the Director is easily over-ruled by the risk panel.

While the bureau will write consumer-protection rules for banks and other firms that offer financial services or products, and will enforce those rules for banks and credit unions with more than $10 billion in assets (only about 1 percent by count of U.S. banks – a much higher percentage by assets) – re maximum credit-card interest rates/fees, and information to borrowers, even information on mortgages, the authority is limited even before we get to the overseeing risk folks stopping any rules it issues, because it did not get any examination or enforcement authority over smaller banks and financial institutions, and did not get blanket authority to step in if “prudential” regulators fail to do their jobs with regard to small banks and financial institutions.

And while the CFPB will write rules – and enforce if non-bank or bank has over $10 billion in deposits, with a Private Student Loan Ombudsman (in the CFPB?) which will help borrowers, analyze complaints and make policy recommendations to Congress and the Administration, we have the current smaller bank/credit unions regulators will be responsible for enforcing the CFPB rules (making the Sallie Mae loans made through the Sallie Mae Bank, which has under $10 billion in assets, regulated by the old regulator as to enforcing CFPB rules, while CFPB regulates its rules on Sallie Mae itself).

While the SEC and CFPB can ban forced arbitration within their respective jurisdictions, and forced arbitration in residential mortgages is banned outright, the CFPB must study the issue first before instituting a ban

CFPB will have no oversight for Auto loans, despite the fact car dealers make the bulk of their profit not from the sale of the cars but from financing, as we depend on the Federal Trade Commission, which currently regulates car dealers, to make better rules.

The Federal Reserve, not the CFPB, will get authority to limit interchange, or “swipe” fees that merchants pay for each debit-card transaction., but again with lenders with assets of less than $10 billion, or 99 percent of U.S. banks, exempt, and no one got regulatory control of Electronic benefits transfer and other prepaid cards.