Portfolio magazine has an interesting take on the Warren nomination: 

Ironically, both sides may well have less to celebrate or worry about than they believe. What Warren or her successors are able to accomplish at the helm of the new consumer financial protection agency is likely to be limited, simply by virtue of the magnitude of the task at hand. Meanwhile, Warren herself strikes StreetWise as being as much or more of a pragmatist as she is an idealist.

Warren seems to be going out of her way to placate banks:  

In a round of early-morning television appearances, Warren sought to tamp down unease that her appointment to set up the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau signaled heightened hostility toward business.

“What I care about is not that banks make lower profits,” she said on CNBC television. “What I object to is building a profit model around fooling people. That is dangerous for families, it’s dangerous for our whole economy.”

From the story: 

“It is fair to say that until that authority is transferred, which will not happen before July of 2011, and before there is a confirmed director in place this agency by statute has very limited authority to actually write new rules,” Geithner said in congressional testimony.

Warren’s goal is to “keep it simple.”

Very good video on financial tips.

Not sure what to make of this coming a day after a Democratic Gubernatorial calls for a ban.  From the story: 

A state lawmaker who helped push through a 2007 law to limit payday lending abuses said Wednesday she plans to file legislation this January to impose tougher restrictions.

The news of Rep. Patricia Lundstrom’s intention comes a day after Democratic gubernatorial candidate Diane Denish announced she would work to make predatory lending practices, including in payday lending, a crime if elected governor.

“I’m certainly not for eliminating the industry, but for stricter regulations on it,” the Gallup Democrat told The Independent. “I’m saying let’s get our arms around it.”

Elizabeth Warren spoke to the credit unions yesterday.  Here’s the take from Reuters: 

Warren, known for rankling Wall Street, said new consumer rules should promote a variety of options for consumers that could be offered by large and small institutions.

“The goal of regulations should not be to drive to a single model where there is one kind of lender that should be advantaged over everybody else,” she told the National Association of Federal Credit Unions on Wednesday.

She said the forthcoming regulations should root out bad players among lenders and increase competition among the good ones.

If she reviews the research, she’ll have to conclude that payday advances are among the “good ones.”

Warren on Bloomberg television.

Thought this kind of pressure would end after Warren’s appointment.   From the story: 

By failing to formally install Warren in the position that economists and activists say she is uniquely prepared to fill, Obama is missing one of the most important opportunities of his presidency.

Warren should not be reporting to Geithner, whose subservience to Wall Street has done severe damage to the administration’s ability not just to correct the course of the economy but to crystallize financial issues that continue to play an essential role in our politics.

Indeed, if Obama were serious about tipping the balance away from Wall Street and toward Main Street, he would replace Geithner with Warren.

Warren has an excellent education, but she is a contract and bankruptcy lawyer, not an economist or macro-finance expert.

Interesting that the head of an institution that would benefit from the end of payday lending stands up with a political candidate to discuss a  ban.  It happened yesterday in New Mexico:

Ben Heyward, president of First Financial Credit Union, said Tuesday that payday lenders don’t benefit anyone.

“This tremendous need for short-term loans didn’t exist until payday lenders got here,” said Heyward, who helped lobby lawmakers to pass the 2007 law and attended Denish’s news conference Tuesday.

“They created this demand,” he said.

The demand for short-term lending didn’t exist before payday lenders?   Rarely do you here anything so dumb from the mouths of a businessman.   I wonder how he would describe the demand for overdraft protection and bounced check fees.