At least according to Politics Daily:

Whether or not Warren becomes a major strategic initiative of the administration, she has much to do. In her role as a presidential assistant, she has been discussing with the White House how to tackle the ongoing foreclosure crisis. She won’t reveal the advice she shares with the president and his aides, but she notes that this foreclosure debacle is a “full-fledged scandal” that warrants a national state-by-state investigation and tougher enforcement of existing regulations. The way she talks about the president suggests they can develop a solid working relationship. They do not know each other personally. But Warren fondly recalls the first time she met Obama. There was a gathering at the home of one of Warren’s Harvard law colleagues for a young Illinois state senator considering a campaign for the US Senate. Warren entered the house and saw a tall fellow with an athletic build, who quickly took her hand. The first words out of his mouth were “predatory lending,” and he proceeded to tell her that he realized that the states were limited in dealing with the most outrageous lending practices and that one reason he wanted to become a senator was to halt such financial scamming. When he finished, Obama smiled and said, “What do you think?” She replied, “You had me at ‘predatory lending.”

The Wall Street Journal says there is a “major crisis” in India’s microlending system.  It seems to me that India needs strict regulations similar to payday lending regulations in states.

It is time to be realistic.
Once a payday loan initiative makes it to the ballot box…it’s over.
CRL, {Consumer Federation’s Jeananne} Fox, et al, has won the propaganda war to view the interest on 2 week loans on an APR basis instead of a fee basis. One must also admire their tactic to lower the rate to 36% instead of being truthful and banning them. This way, they don’t have to answer questions about the lost jobs, lost commercial real estate income, lost state and federal taxes, lost credit opportunities etc..

Forbes columnist John Koppisch analyzes the messaging of th anti-payday lending forces in Montana: 

Capping the rates, proponents argue, will enable needy borrowers to get the cash they need at a much lower price. All in all, it’s a play for the economically illiterate vote.

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The reality is different. A 2007 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said payday loans shouldn’t be considered “predatory” because they often make customers better off by making it easier for them to get credit. Another study, by a researcher and an economics professor in 2008, found “no empirical evidence that payday lending leads to more bankruptcy filings, which casts doubt on the debt trap argument against payday lending.” Most importantly, capping rates won’t make the loans more affordable; instead the loans won’t be available at all. In fact, borrowers might pay more in fees if they can’t get loans and end up bouncing more checks.

In a place called Sikseton, MO.

From Elizabeth Warren’s new blog post at WhiteHouse.gov:

I think the tools that can be at the new agency’s disposal will have at least three kinds of implications.  First, information technology can help ensure that the new agency remains a steady and reliable voice for American families. The kinds of monitoring and transparency that technology make possible can help this agency ward off industry capture.

Second, technology can be used to make help the agency become an effective, high-performance institution that is able to update information, spot trends, and deliver government services twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  If we set it up right from the beginning, the agency can collect and analyze data faster and get on top of problems as they occur, not years later.  Think about how much sooner attention could have turned to foreclosure documentation (robo-signers and fake notaries) if, back in 2007 and 2008, the consumer agency had been in place to gather information and to act before the problem became a national scandal.

And third, technology can be used to expand publicly available data so that more people can analyze information, spot problems, and craft solutions.  When these data are made available – while also, of course, protecting consumer privacy, shielding personal information and protecting proprietary business information – a shared opportunity arises between the agency and people outside government to have a hand in shaping the consumer credit world. 

Warren always refers to the new bureaus as the CFPB, not the BCFP.  So from now on, so will I.

Someone at the Washington Examiner is still complaining about Elizabeth Warren skipping the Senate confirmation process: 

Authority over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is vested in a director not just by presidential appointment, but also by Senate confirmation, but nobody told that to Elizabeth Warren who is working with the Federal Reserve to establish new mortgage disclosure rules on behalf of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The problem? She’s not really supposed to be doing that.

SeekingAlpha says lenders should be in fear of the BCFP’s push for “disclosure.”  Obviously, the payday lending industry has nothing to fear.

From the story: 

Meeting with Google and other high-tech firms, a treasury official said that she will give a speech Thursday at the University of California at Berkeley that outlines her approach to consumer financial protection through Web and other tech tools.

She will meet later in the day with Google top Economist, Hal Varian, to talk about how to calculate a consumer price index. She will meet for lunch with 10-12 high-tech executives to also discuss ways for the bureau, to be launched in July, can use tools like heat maps and crowd sourcing technology to better inform consumers.

In an interview with the National Journal, Warren said: “In the old world, it would be up for the agency to come in, and you look very slowly through a sample of the banks to see what products they mailed out. And did they add a lot of fine print, nonsense by regulation that was not supposed to be there?[Now] all of the sudden you got information, and you got it much faster, and you have it more pinpointed and that becomes relevant for purposes of where you spend enforcement resources.”

I think this Forbes columnist is way overstating the impact that Zest Cash will have: 

Enter ZestCash, and its ilk. I recently wrote about this company – it was formed by  former executives from Google and Capital One, and aims to take on the Payday lending industry. Payday lenders loan the working poor money, typically for two weeks at a time, at what the industry says is 15-17%, or 391% a year (ZestCash, and some consumer groups, say it’s even higher). That sounds high, but works out okay if people can make the two-week mark. They get nailed, however, in the very common event that they fail to make the payment, and have to continue the loan.

ZestCash, which operates through a website people in need of a loan access, says it can charge less, perhaps 300%, by better economic modelling and better risk management, using Internet-type search of non-obviouis data. They are particularly interested in covering the extended loan customers, who are the most at risk of being upended by short term borrowing.