A Fighting Chance

We started with a roundtable discussion with the commanding officer, lawyers, counselors, and other experts on debt and military families. After that, it was time to talk directly with service members and their spouses. The stories we heard that day were intense. They reminded me of the stories Holly had told me, the stories the DOD had reported in its study, the stories I’d heard in my own conversations with military families over the years.

But now there was a difference: Holly was at the helm of an important section of this new agency. And soon the new agency would have the power to do something about these problems. There would be a new cop on this beat, and that cop was getting ready for action.





Cops on the Beat

By that winter, I was feeling a little more settled in our temporary apartment in Washington, although I missed Bruce a lot during the week, and I missed our home in Massachusetts.

Otis, on the other hand, didn’t miss home a bit. He had always hated the stairs in our house in Massachusetts. He was now five years old and very large for a golden retriever. I thought he was fat, but Bruce insisted he was just “big-boned.” Either way, climbing the steep stairs at home was a challenge. Whenever Bruce and I went upstairs, Otis would sit near the bottom step, carefully calculating whether we would be on the second floor long enough to make it worthwhile to heave himself up the stairs. And on the way down the stairs, Otis was like a fully loaded eighteen-wheeler barreling down a steep hill. We just got out of his way.

But in the new Washington apartment building, Otis had an elevator. As far as he was concerned, life was sweet.

As the agency continued to grow, Holly Petraeus and Rich Cordray weren’t the only cops about to go on the beat. That winter, we began to hire what would eventually become a whole squad of banking supervisors under the leadership of Steve Antonakes and Peggy Twohig. Patrice Ficklin would later join us to head up fair lending, where she would fight on behalf of the elderly, communities of color, and other groups that had been targeted for some of the worst mortgages in the housing crash. Together, these dedicated public servants were the enforcers and supervisors who provided the frontline defense against predatory lenders.

But our cops faced a challenge. It wasn’t unique to us; pretty much every agency that oversaw banking (or any other industry) faced it.

The challenge could be summarized by one question: Who are you there to protect?

The answer seemed obvious: Just like any other cop, you’re supposed to protect the people. Right?

That’s certainly how it works in much of the world. Regular cops hear from ordinary citizens every day. They talk to people on the streets when they make their rounds. When a crime happens, the cops meet with victims and their families and ask a lot of questions. And when there’s a particularly high-profile crime, the police chief and the mayor and the press constantly ask them: Did you catch the criminal? Did you put him behind bars? In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, a whole system helps ensure that the cops stay focused on catching the bad guys.

But that isn’t how it works for most people in agencies that watch over the financial industry. I have no doubt that the majority of them have the best of intentions, but let’s face it: Given the way their jobs are designed, they spend most of their time talking to bankers. “Show me the books,” they say. “Explain this practice.” “Comment on this new mortgage form or proposed regulation.” All the while, they are inundated by a constant stream of push-back and pressure from industry people. In the normal course of things, banking regulators simply don’t hear from many ordinary citizens. After all, someone who gets ripped off in a $40 credit card scam might call a consumer complaint hotline, but that person doesn’t have access to the agency lawyers and investigators who supervise the banks on a day-to-day basis. Nope. Bank regulators spend a lot of time with bankers and almost no time with bank customers.

In those early days at the agency, I spent a lot of time talking with Rich, Peggy, and Steve about how to make certain this baby agency wouldn’t someday drift away from its core mission. How could we ensure that someone working for the CFPB would spend most of her time working on behalf of the consumers who didn’t show up at our door—rather than the representatives of banks who did?