In case you missed the hearing yesterday, click here to watch. Thank you C-SPAN for getting the archive up so quickly. For more information from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, or to download Warren’s written testimony, click here.

The decorum in yesterday’s hearing was a little more cordial, though some news organizations are focusing on the intensity of the questions that were asked of her.

Elizabeth Warren will be testifying before the House Committee on Government and Oversight Reform tomorrow. The hearing, titled “Consumer Financial Protection Efforts: Answers Needed,” is expected to be the last time that Warren testifies in front of Congress before the CFPB’s official July 21 start date.

DATE: July 12, 2011

TIME: 9:30 – 11:30 a.m. EST

LOCATION: Room 2154 Rayburn House Office Building

Click here tomorrow morning to watch the live Webcast. Please note that this link will not be active until then and you must watch it using Internet Explorer. All other Web browsers will not work.

With the CFPB start date of July 21 fast approaching, much has been made of the agency’s lack of a Senate-confirmed director. At this point, it looks to be a foregone conclusion that the Bureau will kick off next Thursday with the director’s seat still empty. But what does that mean about how the CFPB will operate, if they have no one at the helm? Kate Davidson of American Banker tried to answer that question this morning, and came to one interesting conclusion: it is the banks that will come under extra scrutiny with a director-less CFPB, while the non-bank institutions cannot be examined until a director is in place. This table from the article shows exactly what can and can’t be done if a director is not in place:

While many companies have been hit hard by the struggling economy, a number of payday lenders and pawn shops have seen an uptick in business over the past year. Here’s AP reporter Bernard Condon’s explanation for the industry’s recent success:

In investing, it’s often better to focus on what you can safely predict, even if that safety is found in companies that thrive on hard times. One good bet: The jobless aren’t likely to find work anytime soon. And companies profiting from their bad fortune will continue to do so.

With exactly one week to go before the official opening of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Elizabeth Warren will have one more opportunity to go before the House of Representatives and defend the soon-to-be agency. Warren will testify on Thursday, July 14 at 9:30 am before the House Oversight Committee for what is sure to be another entertaining exchange between the Harvard Law Professor and some of her most outspoken opponents in Congress. If the title for the hearing ( “Consumer Financial Protection Efforts: Answers Needed“) is any indicator, we can expect the committee members to get any and all remaining questions off of their chest before the agency kicks off next Thursday.

Interesting commentary from HuffPo on the Bloomberg Businessweek cover story re: Elizabeth Warren.

I’m going to generously assume that the weird, critical, slam-book-style bubbles that dot the cover of the July 11-17 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, touting an Elizabeth Warren cover story, are simply an interpretaive way of sending up Warren’s myopic critics, and not the magazine itself commenting on a woman whose most fervent desire is for ordinary Americans to have intelligible loan and credit-card agreements.

All the same, seeing Warren’s picture dotted with epithets like “smug” and “entitled” and “know-it-all” causes a tiny secretion of bile to churn in my bowels. Ask a woman what the barb “know-it-all” means to her, and I’m guessing you’ll hear back something like, “It means I kept using my brain even after no one wanted to fuck me anymore” — to bastardize a line from Tina Fey.

As we reported earlier in the week, the CFPB and the Judge Advocate Generals of the United States Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard earlier this week announced that they would work together to help better protect servicemembers and their families from unlawful acts and practices.

Quote from Hollister/Holly Petraeus, assistant director for the Office of Servicemember Affairs at the CFPB:

“I have worked for years trying to protect military families from predatory practices and to help raise awareness of the unique financial challenges they face – and I know the Judge Advocate Generals have been on the front lines in each of those fights … Servicemembers and their families sacrifice a great deal for our country and they deserve advocates who will use every available resource to protect them from financial threats. Through this partnership and our other efforts, we will work to make sure that the days of military families being easy targets for predatory practices and unscrupulous lenders are a thing of the past.”

What are the goals of the joint venture?

• Protecting servicemembers and their families from unlawful acts or practices by providers of consumer financial products or services, including through enforcement actions where necessary;
• Creating mechanisms that enable the Offices of the Judge Advocate Generals to provide input on the Bureau’s efforts to improve the marketplace for servicemembers, their families, and law-abiding businesses;
• Finding ways to work together as efficiently and effectively as possible to address concerns raised by servicemembers and their families about consumer financial products or services; and
• Working with other offices in the Department of Defense to support improved financial literacy training for servicemembers and their families.

Peggy Twohig, team lead of the nonbank division at the CFPB, is “reaching out for input” to help the new agency define “larger participants”. She wrote a blog post yesterday where she told the public that the CFPB is meeting with “nearly 100 organizations from across the country to hear their views about an important building block for our nonbank supervision program.”

“Why are we asking these organizations and the public for their thoughts? Their feedback is vital in defining who is a “larger participant” in certain markets for consumer financial products or services – a key step in building our supervision program.”

Click here to read more of her post.

Sheila Bair, the Bush-appointed chairman of the FDIC, has stepped down. Her tenure ends today and to fill her shoes: Martin Gruenberg, “her low-profile successor.”

According to CNN Money, “Gruenberg enjoys wide support from both industry and consumer advocates.”