The headlines of Fox Business Flash are here. See what clicks on FoxBusiness.com.
WASHINGTON – Elected President Joe Biden has chosen Rohit Chopra to be the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and to encourage a progressive ally of Senator Elizabeth Warren to lead the agency that advocated its creation.
Chopra, now a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, helped launch the consumer agency after the 2008-09 financial crisis and served as deputy director, where he sounded the alarm about the soaring levels of student loan debt. The choice comes because Democrats are watching ways to provide student loan relief to millions of Americans as part of a COVID-19 aid package.
Biden announced the move Monday, along with his intention to appoint Gary Gensler, a former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs banker, has stepped up oversight of the complex financial transactions caused by the Great Recession.
HERE IS HOW MANY WORKS DECIDE $ 15 MINIMUM WAGE CAN KILL, ACCORDING TO THE CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE
Biden’s choice of an expert with experience as a strong market regulator during the financial crisis to lead the SEC suggests that the Wall Street watchdog agency is turning to an activist role after a deregulation period during the Trump administration.
Consumer and investor advocates praised the choice of Gensler and Chopra. The two must be confirmed by the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats.
Elected President Joe Biden has chosen Rohit Chopra to be the director of the Bureau of Financial Consumer Protection, as well as Gary Gensler to be the next head of the SEC.
Gensler, now a professor of economics and management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, was an assistant treasury secretary in the Clinton administration and later headed the CFTC during Barack Obama’s term. With the background of having worked at Wallman Power Station Goldman Sachs for nearly twenty years, Gensler was very surprised by being a tough regulator of big banks as CFTC chairman.
Gensler was fluent in politics and economic policy and was chief financial officer of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign against Donald Trump and Obama’s economic adviser in his 2008 presidential bid.
Gensler was a leader and adviser to Biden’s transition team responsible for the Federal Reserve, banking issues and security regulation.
Elected President Joe Biden has chosen Rohit Chopra to be the director of the Bureau of Financial Consumer Protection, as well as Gary Gensler to be the next head of the SEC.
Jay Clayton, a former Wall Street lawyer who headed the SEC during the Trump administration, led a deregulatory push to soften rules affecting Wall Street and the financial markets, as Trump promised then accepted his office. Rules under the Dodd-Frank Act that tightened the reins on banks and Wall Street in the wake of the financial crisis and the Great Recession have been captured.
“Gensler will turn the SEC away to make it easy for companies to raise money and protect unscrupulous investors,” said Erik Gordon, an associate professor of business at the University of Michigan. the Republican side – and he probably does not care. ‘
GET FOX-BUSINESS PARTS BY CLICK HERE
Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, the senior Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, said Gensler’s receptivity to new financial technologies and cryptocurrency is positive. But he added: “I fear the Democrats want the (SEC) to move away from the dual common ground in an effort to achieve their most biased goals.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the senior Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee who is set to chair, said Gensler’s record as a regulator “shows that he will hold bad actors accountable and put the interests of working families first.”
Brown said Chopra would bring the Financial Consumer Protection Bureau back to its central mission to protect consumers, and would also ensure that the agency plays a leading role in combating racial inequalities in our financial system.
The CFPB was established at the request of Warren as an independent agency by the Dodd-Frank Act. The director was given a wide space to act alone, without winning the agreement of members of an agency board.
While enforcing consumer protection legislation, the CFPB has also been empowered to investigate the practices of virtually any business that sells financial products and services: credit card companies, payday lenders, mortgage services, debt collectors, non-profit colleges, car suppliers, money- transfer agents. Chopra was a deputy to its first director, Richard Cordray, as the agency undertook enforcement actions against a variety of large and small businesses and returned tens of millions of dollars to consumers harmed by illegal practices.
The CFPB has become a major target for conservative Republicans. Trump appointed the then White House budget director Mick Mulvaney as acting director of the CFPB when Cordray left in November 2017.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT FOX BUSINESS
Mulvaney was an outspoken critic of the consumer agency and made profound changes to it by, for example, easing the regulations on payday loans and withdrawing on the enforcement efforts. The agency has been headed by Trump, Kathy Kraninger, since December 2018.
As one of two Democratic commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission with five members, Chopra has been an outspoken critic of practices by big companies, most notably the technology giant Facebook. He filed strong disagreements over FTC actions against the company due to invasion of privacy and alleged competitive behavior, saying they did not go far enough.