President Obama said Sunday that he would nominate Richard Cordray, the former attorney general of Ohio, to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, passing over Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor who was the driving force behind the agency’s creation.
Was this a decision that “reflects political realities”, as the report says? Well, the report itself refutes that claim:
While Ms. Warren received the brunt of the scrutiny, Wall Street executives also bristled at the selection of Mr. Cordray to lead the bureau’s enforcement team. Seen as a zealous prosecutor of financial crime, Mr. Cordray is a similarly contentious figure among bankers and lobbyists.
Republicans made it clear on Sunday that they were no more likely to confirm Mr. Cordray than Ms. Warren. Forty-four Republican senators have signed a letter saying they would refuse to vote on any nominee to lead the bureau, demanding instead that the agency replace a single leader with a board of directors.
What’s going to happen, then, is no director for the CFPB in any case. But meanwhile Obama has passed up a chance to symbolically align himself with the public and against the banksters.
Now why would he distance himself from his friends?
He is not on our side. He is working against us.
Ironically this financial reform legislation is one of the three things the Obama loyalists always list in the comments where they are defending him and explaining why we should support him because of his accomplishments. Another one on the list is the repeal of DADT which the administration just backed off of when they asked the court to stay their decision to put the repeal into force. The other one is the health care reform thingy, and that will be pretty much screwed by the deficit cut deal.
So that leaves nothing.
Well, the Obots are always talking about Obama’s 11-dimensional chess. Maybe, if he actually did want Warren to head the CFPB, he’s named this guy, the Repubs will say they won’t vote for him but think Warren’s off the table and actually recess the Senate; then Obama makes a recess appointment of WARREN to head the CFPB.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
In Unicorn and Sparkly Ponies Land.