Massachusetts Dems are wooing the president’s top pick as CFPB head to run for senate. Elizabeth Warren, busy laying the groundwork for the new agency (a deadline she must meet by July 21), would go head-to-head with Republican Scott Brown.

In response to a question about whether she would enter the race, a spokeswoman for the agency, Jen Howard, said Monday, “Elizabeth Warren is 100 percent focused on building the new consumer agency.”

In case you happen to be in Kansas City sampling some world famous BBQ, or of course doing business, make sure you also attend the Kansas City Federal Reserve Banks’ research seminar entitled: “Could Restrictions on Payday Lending Hurt Consumers?”

The seminar this afternoon will highlight recent research conducted by Community Affairs Senior Economist Kelly Edmiston entitled, “Could Restrictions on Payday Lending Hurt Consumers?” This research provides new empirical evidence on the potential benefits and costs to consumers of restricting payday lending. CFSA’s Communications Chair Darrin Andersen (also president of QC Holdings) will be testifying.

Agenda

Event Details

Date:  Today, from 2:00 to 4:00 (cst) p.m.
Location:  Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, 1 Memorial Drive, Kansas City, MO 64198

Tomorrow before the House Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts of Public and Private Programs, Elizabeth Warren is expected to dispel the myth that new agency she’s building is too powerful.

“I have been told that if you say anything in Washington often enough, it is eventually treated as fact – regardless of whether it is true or false,” she will say. “While making baseless claims might be shrewd tactics for those who want to undermine the bureau’s work, they are flatly wrong.”

To read more about Warren’s planned testimony, click here.

With the announcement last week of the CFPB’s “Know Before You Owe” campaign, one of the main concerns that has been circulating in the financial services marketplace is whether the new agency should involve the public in its decision making. Elizabeth Warren explains the CFPB’s ‘know before you owe’ mortgage document initiative to CNN’s Ali Velshi.

While the fight in the Texas House of Representatives may be over, the San Antonio News Express continues to focus on last weeks debate over the three payday lending bills that were on the House floor. In particular, the paper’s editorial board takes issue with Rep. Gary Elkins’ (R-Houston) involvement in the legislative process, seeing that he owns a payday lending company in Texas.

Elkins has brought disrepute on himself. He also placed House members in the troubling position of supporting legislation a colleague had appealed to them to oppose on the basis of personal interest, or opposing that legislation for his apparent financial benefit.

According to this story from U.S. News & World Report, when Obama and Elizabeth Warren first met it was like a Hollywood encounter.

“Just like in the movies,” says Warren, who recently revealed the story to students at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, Ark. At that point, she recalls, Obama said “predatory lending.” “On and on and on, and I never get a word in,” she adds of the discussion.

As he summed up, Obama flashed his famous toothy grin, knowing he had won her over. “Well?” said Obama. Warren reached for a line from the popular 1996 movie Jerry Maguire: “You had me at ‘predatory lending.’ ”

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D-SD) is going head to head with his GOP cohorts, saying in a statement late last week that tweaking the Bureau before it opens shop in July would be premature.

“We should not re-legislate the bureau when it hasn’t even had a chance to start doing its job,” Johnson said.  “Republicans opposed a strong consumer watchdog from the start, and now they are at it again,” Johnson said. “The truth is, this bureau is already subject to greater checks and balances than any other financial regulator, and this is just another attempt to delay and derail these critical new protections.”

A new report by the Pew Charitable Trust’s Safe Checking in the Electronic Age Project analyzed the policies of the nation’s 10 largest banks. A New York Times Editorial says it shows why checking account holders — in other words most adult Americans — are in desperate need of better protections. Required disclosure documents run an average of 111 pages and often hide penalty and fee information in several places so that customers cannot easily find it. Checking overdraft fees are not “reasonable and proportional,” as late fees must now be for credit cards. According to the study, the average overdraft charge of $35 on an average overdraft of $36 amounts to an annualized interest rate of more than 5,000 percent. Click image below to see the full infographic from Pew.

After the worst crisis since the Great Depression, President Obama has unleashed an unusual force to regulate the financial system: a bunch of empty seats. Sheila C. Bair is soon to leave her post at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Obama administration will have five major bank regulatory positions either unfilled or staffed with acting directors. The administration has inexplicably left open the vice chairman for banking supervision, a new position at the Federal Reserve created by the Dodd-Frank Act. Let’s not forget that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director has yet to be named. There are some lower-level positions that don’t have candidates, including the head of the Treasury’s Office of Financial Research and the Financial Stability Oversight Council insurance post. Perhaps most important, according to one opinion writer, is the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, currently headed by Acting Comptroller John Walsh, who took over the agency last August.

Last week, a group of Democratic representatives (and even Dr. Phil) called on the president to make a recess appointment of Elizabeth Warren. The letter that was circulated, entitled “There is Only One Person Who Should Be Leading the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” was signed by Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Keith Ellison (D-MN), and Brad Miller (D-NC).

According to The Atlantic’s Daniel Indiviglio though, appointing Warren would ignore the CFPB’s principles.

When considering whether or not this move is wise, whether Warren would make a good CFPB head is irrelevant. The president taking this action and disregarding the normal confirmation track would go against the very principles that the bureau stands for.