Civil Rights Coalition: Appointment of Cordray Is the ‘Right Choice’ for Financial Consumers

Economic Justice News 01.4,12

Faced
with ongoing obstruction
by Senate Republicans against the confirmation of qualified nominees, President
Obama today made a recess appointment of Richard Cordray to lead the newly
created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
(CFPB).

The
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and coalition
partners who supported the creation of
the CFPB during the fight over financial reform in 2010 welcomed Obama’s
decision, which came after Senate
Republicans blocked a full vote on Cordray last
month.

“By
using his constitutional authority to bypass
the unprecedented and hyperpartisan obstruction to any nominee to this post,
President Obama is putting our nation’s financial well-being before politics,”
said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of
The Leadership Conference. “This is the right choice for Americans who have
been battered in this economy and bamboozled by Wall Street’s more unscrupulous
practices, and we celebrate it.”

Henderson
also noted the importance of the CFPB to communities that have been hardest hit
by unregulated banks and financial service companies.

“Communities
of color have always been targets of predatory lenders who created a financial
mess that resulted in losses of $194 billion in the African-American community
and $177 billion in the Latino community, the largest exodus of wealth ever
recorded from these groups,” added Henderson.

President
Obama nominated Richard Cordray last July to serve as director of the CFPB,
which was created by the 2010 financial reform law to protect
consumers from predatory and abusive lending practices like the ones that led
to the financial and housing crises.  Cordray’s
nomination received broad, bipartisan support.

Cordray
served as Ohio’s attorney general from 2009 to 2011 and previously served as a
member of the state’s House of Representatives, as the state’s treasurer, and
as the state’s first solicitor general, where he earned a reputation for a
strong commitment to protecting consumers.