Consumer Advocate Gets Biden Nod to Head Consumer Bureau

A political ally of Sen. Elizabeth Warren who worked with Warren to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been named by President-elect Joe Biden to head up the bureau.

Politico has more on the appointment and what it means for the direction of the Bureau:

Chopra, a Wharton-trained MBA, worked as a consultant at McKinsey before joining government. Over the course of his term at the FTC, he has pushed the agency to be more skeptical of private equity buyers and more aggressive in using its rulemaking powers to rein in businesses.

Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling last year, Biden can fire current CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger on Day One. But erasing President Donald Trump’s industry-friendly imprint on the bureau, which has pulled back on enforcement and watered down Obama-era rules, may take years.

Kraninger has come under fire from consumer advocates as someone who has been friendly to payday lenders. Under her leadership, the bureau adopted a very weak version of a rule designed to rein-in payday predators. This came after five years of work by advocates to convince the bureau to adopt a rule that would provide relief to consumers who fall prey to debt trap lenders.

Chopra seems poised to shift the bureau back in the direction of actually regulating industries and protecting consumers, rather than providing political cover for the unscrupulous lenders and other big business entities who…