A Fighting Chance

THE DAY AFTER the president signed Dodd–Frank and the consumer agency into law, I was on a plane again, this time to Los Angeles.

A few weeks earlier, Amelia and Sushil had called with the results of a sonogram—it’s a boy! But only days after that happy call, they rushed to the emergency room when Amelia went into early labor. The doctors barely managed to stop her contractions, and Amelia was ordered on strict bed rest for the duration of her pregnancy. The baby wasn’t due until November, meaning she would have to spend five months on bed rest.

Each day was a victory, as the tiny baby got a little stronger before he made his appearance in the world. But each day was also touch and go, and for much of the summer Amelia was in and out of the hospital. Now Bruce and I were back in Los Angeles, and it was scary to see Amelia flat on her back in bed, strapped to monitors and barely allowed to move.

Amelia is a lot like me—she doesn’t embrace the idea of “rest” very well—so this long confinement felt like punishment. The girls were rattled, struggling to understand why their mother was spending every day in bed. I wanted to be with all of them, caring for my granddaughters and holding Amelia’s hand.

The minute our plane touched down, I called Amelia. Everything was the same. My next call was to Dan, who said that the press was reporting that an open letter had just gone to the White House, urging President Obama to nominate me as the director of the brand-new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The letter was signed by fifty-seven members of the House and eleven senators. It was accompanied by a petition that had already been signed by 140,000 people, all supporting me for the job.

Wow: that seemed like a lot of people to even know the name of a new government agency, let alone sign a petition about who ought to be its director. I felt deeply touched that so many people were invested in this agency and that they would trust me to take on this extraordinary job.

During the months I fought for the consumer agency’s creation, I spent almost no time thinking about actually running it. Occasionally, someone would ask me if I wanted the job, but I brushed it off. For a year and a half, I’d been juggling teaching, chairing COP, and doing everything possible to help get the agency passed into law. I didn’t want to think about another job. Now the agency was law, and I needed to get to Los Angeles to be with family.

But my mind was already racing. Somewhere in the middle of fighting for the agency, sometime after the zillionth explanation of what the agency could do, I had gotten really fired up about doing it. The director of this new agency would have the chance to get it off to the right start, to set the priorities and to build a structure that would make this thing work. We had fought hard for an agency that would help keep people from getting cheated. The agency could fundamentally change the market for consumer credit. It could forever banish a profit model that was based on tricking people. In time, it could help establish a marketplace that really worked, one where it would be easy to compare products and get the best deal. It might help people like Flora, who fell prey to that nice mortgage broker, or Mr. Estrada and his family, who were shoved out of their home in a matter of weeks. The potential was huge, but the agency needed a strong start.

A strong director could build a strong agency, and now the president would choose someone for the job. The question was: Who?

A Cheerleader?



I think the president was in a bind. (Well, he was in another bind; this was hardly his first.) No matter whose name he put forward, he would make somebody unhappy.

On the one hand, he had a petition from a bunch of lawmakers—along with 140,000 people—asking him to pick me. Several media outlets weighed in. A New York Times editorial said he should nominate me precisely because the banks would oppose me. Congressman Barney Frank jumped in with both feet (does Barney jump in any other way?) and urged the president to appoint me. A rap video made the rounds starring a supercool-looking guy in cowboy duds waving a lasso and rapping, “Sheriff Warren, she’s what we need, yo.”

On the other hand, the banks hated the idea that I might become the agency’s director, and many of the politicians who had fought against the CFPB were also adamantly opposed to the notion. Republican senator Richard Shelby from Alabama thundered: “I would hope she’s not confirmable. I would not support Warren.… This is a power grab.”