CFPB Leaderless

President Obama’s candidate to head the newly formed Consumer financial Protection Bureau will have to wait indefinitely before he can take over the reins of the Organization. During the hearing for the approval of the leader, the Republicans, while giving their wholehearted approval, also stated that their stand on blocking any candidate’s appointment until the changes for limiting the bureau’s power had been made.

Richard Cordray, a former attorney general from Ohio, has the approval of the Republicans and the Democrats. This soft-spoken lawyer has the same values as Elizabeth Warren but goes about getting them done without her aggressiveness. Sen. Richard Shelby apprised Corday of his approval but told him that he was “caught between a big substantive debate”. Unless that debate and issue is resolved, it seems that CFPB will be leaderless.

The Republicans’ stand on the Organization is that it has too much power. The appointed director of CFPB will have the power to a lot of determine a lot of things like the power to decide “which consumers have access to credit and which do not”, as stated by Sen. Shelby.

The Democrats responded to this by saying that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is like any other organization and its decisions are not binding. They can be ruled over by a panel. They also outlined the checks that have been put in place to control the power of the bureau.

Until this political stalemate is overcome, there seems to be no chance of the Bureau getting a director and till such time, the consumers and the credit bureaus will continue as before.