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Home > News & Events > Events Calendar > STUDY GROUP - The Politics of Financial Crises
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emailTuesday, October 11, 2011
STUDY GROUP - The Politics of Financial Crises
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – A $500M
Dream or Nightmare?
Guest Speaker: Elizabeth Vale, director of external
affairs for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), former
Business Liaison in the Obama White House during the passage
of DFA; Managing Director Morgan Stanley. Harvard
'76
DFA created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”), an
agency dedicated to consumer protection for financial products by
all providers. The genesis of this new bureau is credited to
Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, who until recently was leading
its implementation as an assistant to the President.
This new agency is not without significant controversy. First, it
does not come cheap. In the age of budget deficits, the budget of
this new agency is $500 million annually, taken from monies earned
by the Federal Reserve which avoids the appropriations
process.
Next the CFPB has the power to rewrite existing consumer protection
rules – everything from mortgage lending to credit card statements
– as well as create new ones. Its rules will cover all providers
and it will enforce them against all lenders with assets of $10
billion or more. What will this new emphasis on consumer
protection mean for traditional safety and soundness supervision?
Was creating another agency the right answer? Was lousy consumer
protection a cause of the crisis? What is the role of government in
consumer protection? The politics around this new agency has
prevented a director being confirmed and threatens to derail its
mission.
http://www.consumerfinance.gov/
(the bureau only not the speaker)
- Location:Littauer 166
- Date:Tuesday, October 11, 2011
-
Time:4:00 PM
