So, Elizabeth Warren gets unceremoniously dumped from a chance to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau–because her boss blinked and wasn’t up for a fight with Republicans, who will probably hold up Richard Cordray’s nomination as well. Republicans may rue the day only in this sense:
Consumer advocate and progressive hero Elizabeth Warren is fueling speculation that she will run for Senate next year against Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown.
CREDIT RATING AGENCIES
While federal officials issued reports chiding the nation’s top credit rating agencies, Mr. Cordray took them to court. In 2009, he sued the firms, saying that they awarded top grades to troubled mortgage-backed securities and also were “intimately involved in structuring” the investments. The products, he said, caused retirement funds to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. The suit is still pending.
“The rating agencies’ total disregard for the life’s work of ordinary Ohioans caused the collapse of our housing and credit markets and is at the heart of what’s wrong with Wall Street today,” he said at the time.
GMAC
Last fall, Mr. Cordray became one of the first attorneys general to take action in the nationwide investigation of wrongful foreclosures. His target was GMAC Mortgage and its parent, Ally Financial. Mr. Cordray sued the firms, arguing that they had used bogus paperwork to foreclose on homes. He sought to collect up to $25,000 for each foreclosure.
A.I.G.:
One of Mr. Cordray’s biggest wins came against the American International Group and its former top executives, whom he accused of accounting fraud. He secured about $700 million from the insurer and a $115 million from its former chief executive, Maurice R. Greenberg.
MERRILL LYNCH
In 2008, his office sued Merrill Lynch on behalf of the state’s teacher pension funds. Mr. Cordray said that Merrill had artificially inflated its stock price, which fell after the bank had losses on subprime mortgages.
Merrill settled for $475 million. He later led a multistate lawsuit against Bank of America over its takeover of Merrill. “The amount of shareholder value affected here, negatively, is about as great as has been alleged in any case, ever,” Mr. Cordray said at the time about the suit, which is also pending.
Seems fine. But, we will still miss the passion Warren brought to the table.
