WSJ Editorial Attacks Cordray For Defending Consumers

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

A July 20 Wall Street Journal editorial attacked Obama's nominee for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray. The editorial called Cordray a “political enforcer in the Eliot Spitzer mold” and went on to attack him for, among other things, “su[ing] Ally Financial's GMAC Mortgage over its foreclosure practices.” In fact, as a USA Today article noted in October 2010, Cordray filed the suit because the companies were allegedly violating the law -- the suit alleged “they used fraudulent affidavits and documents to mislead courts in hundreds of home foreclosures in the state.”

From the editorial:

In the small favors department, President Obama did not nominate banking scourge Elizabeth Warren to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Instead on Monday he nominated one of her protégés, former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, whose career sounds like Mrs. Warren without the charm.

Mr. Cordray, the bureau's current head of enforcement, is a political enforcer in the Eliot Spitzer mold, which is not what the country needs in an ostensibly dispassionate federal regulator. He showed his hostility toward business after becoming AG in 2009 after his predecessor resigned in disgrace, launching an avalanche of litigation.

He sued Ally Financial's GMAC Mortgage over its foreclosure practices--a lawsuit that helped spawn the national robo-signing uproar, which has mushroomed into an effort to force big banks to cough up billions for Democrats to redistribute. He sued rating agencies for grading mortgage-backed securities as safe investments. He sued Bank of America for purportedly hiding losses and bonuses prior to the Merrill Lynch merger. The list of cases is long.

[...]

Mr. Obama must figure that even if Mr. Cordray isn't confirmed by the Senate, he can be handed a recess appointment. Meantime, Mrs. Warren has populated the bureau with her ideological soulmates who believe that private financial institutions ought to serve political ends as much as they do shareholders.