Seattle Times says Eugene Kimmelman is a top contender for the CFPB job: 

Three strong, credible choices are mentioned to lead the powerful new agency, but longtime consumer advocate and knowledgeable Capitol Hill veteran Eugene Kimmelman is the preferred choice.

He was vice president of federal and international affairs at the Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, before he joined the administration as deputy assistant attorney general in the antitrust division of the Justice Department.

We’ve discussed Elizabeth Warren to death.  Let’s look at another candidate who is said to be in the running for the CFPB top spot: Michael Barr, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Institutions.  From his official biography:   

Barr has taught Financial Institutions, International Finance, Transnational Law, and Jurisdiction and Choice of Law, and co-founded the International Transactions Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School. He has also served as a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and at the Brookings Institution. Barr has researched and written about a wide range of issues in financial regulation. He has conducted large-scale empirical research regarding financial services and low- and moderate-income households. Barr recently co-edited Building Inclusive Financial Systems (Brookings Press 2007, with Kumar & Litan) and Insufficient Funds (Russell Sage 2008, with Blank).

Barr previously served as Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin’s Special Assistant, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, as Special Advisor to President William J. Clinton, as a special advisor and counselor on the policy planning staff at the State Department, and as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and then-District Court Judge Pierre N. Leval of the Southern District of New York.

If you can take it, you can watch the signing at 11:30 on the White House’s live stream.

Victims of overdraft protection and credit card rate increases according to Politico.

An op-ed from Congresswoman Jackie Speier in the Huffington Post: 

The last time I was this angry I was sitting in front of the TV in my bathrobe and slippers, watching the confirmation hearing for Clarence Thomas and listening to Senators interrogating Anita Hill as if she were a criminal. I vividly remember kicking a slipper off and throwing it at the TV. Why am I angry today? Now the powerful and the pundits have their eye on making sure the respected visionary Elizabeth Warren is kept in her place. Enough is enough!

The drama is over the question of who the President will appoint to head the CFPB.   Not sure an announcement will come today.   From The Hill:

The bill largely resembles the Obama administration’s original proposal last year and will be enacted nearly two years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Passing new financial regulations has been one of the president’s top priorities. The legislation faced stiff opposition from Republicans: Only three in each of the House and Senate wound up supporting the final legislation.

One of the first decisions for the president will be nominating an inaugural head of the consumer bureau, which will have broad power to write and enforce rules over home loans, credit cards and other products across the financial system. The administration is considering a handful of potential nominees, including Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard professor and original advocate for the agency.

Financial reform is expected to be a boon to lawyers.  From the story:

“This whole bill creates a whole new realm of legal work,” {Attorney Michael} Bleier said of the recently passed Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. He added later that “I tell our junior lawyers here that this is a great time to be practicing banking law.”

The law has been billed as a comprehensive overhaul of the country’s financial regulatory system, with implications for everyone from public companies to investment shops and mutual funds to insurance companies. New agencies have been created and existing agencies have been given broader authority to regulate the financial services industry.

As the bill is being readied for President Barack Obama’s signature, lawyers are readying for the legal work to flow in. Law firms have been positioning themselves as leaders on the financial overhaul, sending out client alerts, advising clients on where they think the bill might go and creating internal task forces to tackle the broad array of issues facing their clients. But until the final version came out, much of that was a guessing game.

Forbes columnist asks the question:  “Do We Really Need a Consumer Financial Protection Agency?”

Those of us in the payday loan industry need to make it much easier for our customers to write, email, and telephone our regulators and congress representatives. We need web sites that make IT SIMPLE! Our adversaries have been doing this for years. We are getting killed!

I watched a webinar last week by a consumer protectionist organization. They make video presentations to members of Congress of consumers describing their horror stories with a renegade in our industry. These consumers couldn’t make the trip so our adversaries recorded their experiences.

Another tactic of our adversaries was to “throw car title lenders under the bus if necessary in order to gain a token from their state payday loan industry.”

They attempt to separate us and pit one micro-lending niche against another.

We have to get it together! SOON!!

Looks like they will write this story from every angle possible: 

According to the bill’s language, the Treasury Secretary has sole authority to build the new agency before it’s ultimately transferred to the Federal Reserve. That includes anointing a person to head the effort on his behalf, and under his authority. The interim head would serve until the President’s nominee is confirmed by the Senate.

That person could be Elizabeth Warren.

And the legislation doesn’t appear to contain a deadline for a Presidential nomination, experts say, which means Warren could start the agency from scratch, put her people in, begin cracking down on predatory and abusive lenders, and initiate a culture that would put consumers’ interests above those of the nation’s most powerful financial institutions.

I have no particular insight into the thinking of the Obama Administration on this, but having been around politics and Congress for many years (I worked in the House for four years and Senate for seven years), I doubt the Administration will try to bypass the Senate confirmation process.  It’s just not a fight they need to have.