The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will on July 21 officially become the nation's newest government agency — and the only one with the singular aim of looking out for the best interests of consumers. The agency is controversial, and at the center of it all is the woman whom President Obama asked to set it up: Elizabeth Warren.
Warren, a Harvard professor, is a longtime crusader against unfair lending practices. She's widely credited with coming up with the idea of a government agency designed to protect consumers. Even her many detractors acknowledge she is an articulate advocate.
"This most recent crisis started one lousy mortgage at a time," she said at a House Oversight Committee hearing earlier this week. "If we had had a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in place, we could have avoided a lot of the pain that we've gone through in the last 2 1/2 years."
At this point, no one is really questioning the need for a consumer watchdog, but many people, mostly Republicans in Congress and those in the financial industry, are questioning the way this new agency was designed.
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