The Treasury Department will be awarding finalists in the MyMoneyAppUp challenge this week with a $25,000 prize purse. Five of eight app design finalist teams to receive the reward took on the challenge to create next generation mobile apps that will help Americans shape their financial futures. The ceremony will be held this Friday at Treasury, where the first-place winner will take home a $10,000 grand prize.

You can learn more about the challenge and its finalists by clicking here, or watching the video below. One finalist, Know It ALL!, “enables consumers to instantly calculate the full cost of a credit card purchase so they can make a fully informed decision about a purchase.” Who couldn’t use n app that helps customers make informed decisions on the cost of credit? Now only if it could help compare it to other forms of credit!

The Treasury Department said today that on its opening day the agency’s Consumer Response Center began accepting credit card complaints on its new website, consumerfinance.gov.  The CFPB will also be sending introductory letters to the CEOs of the depository institutions – generally large banks and their bank affiliates – that are subject to CFPB supervision. These letters, which outline the agency’s approach to supervision and examination, mark the beginning of the CFPB’s regular communications with the institutions it supervises.  In addition, the CFPB’s Enforcement Team is ready to begin enforcing federal consumer financial laws, when necessary.

The Bureau said it would also refer distressed homeowners to housing counselors and, over the coming months, expand its operations to handle complaints about other consumer financial products.

“Two years ago, the consumer agency was just barely an idea. A year ago it became law. And this week, the CFPB will open its doors and begin to make a difference in the marketplace,” said Elizabeth Warren,s pecial advisor to the secretary of the Treasury on the CFPB. “This agency is ready to be a cop on the beat for American families – and I couldn’t be prouder.”

Battle lines have been drawn over the confirmation of Elizabeth Warren as the new head of the CFPB. And there’s no question where the chips fall for the GOP and the Dems. But while much of the focus in the financial sector has been who to appoint to the new consumer protection agency, there are many other spots that have yet to be filled.

In the areas of economic and financial policymaking there are a dozen senior positions vacant or staffed by temporary caretakers.

“The void atop much of the government’s financial machinery was underscored Monday when Nobel laureate Peter Diamond withdrew his nomination to serve on the Federal Reserve.

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And a new gap will soon be created as Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, has decided to return this fall to his position as a professor at the University of Chicago.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner warned Monday that a failure by the Senate to confirm nominees to run federal regulators would be especially harmful because the agencies are trying to write hundreds of new financial rules.”

“They will make it less likely that there will be enough capable people in the regulatory bodies to bring the care and judgment necessary for the new rules to work,” Geithner said. “They will create the conditions again for a situation in which the weak and poorly managed risk bringing down the financial system again.”