Sept. 11: US President Obama signalled on Friday that he was close to choosing a director for a new consumer bureau, but an array of top jobs that will be crucial to shaping economic policy and financial regulation for the rest of his term remain unfilled.
At a White House press conference, Mr Obama praised Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor who was the chief proponent of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and is a frontrunner to lead it. Calling her “a dear friend” and a “tremendous advocate” for the new agency, the president said he had talked with her but added, “I’m not going to make an official announcement until it’s ready.”
Ms Warren is considered a foe of Wall Street but a favourite of liberals. If she were nominated to the post it could set off a partisan brawl similar to the battles that nearly swamped the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law Mr Obama signed in July, which created the bureau.
That position, however, is only one of a half-dozen unfilled presidentially appointed posts that have vast powers over the mortgage market, financial stability and the banking and insurance industries. The seats have been vacant even though the new law directed regulatory agencies to make scores of major decisions that will shape Wall Street and the financial sector for years to come.
Delays in the appointment process — lengthened by Congressional brinksmanship and cumbersome vetting — are not new, and some choices have come quickly. On Friday, the president named Austan D. Goolsbee chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, filling a position that had just opened.
But the confluence of vacancies in the economic realm comes at a time of regulatory transformation, a slowing economy and a Republican resurgence. (Mr Goolsbee, who was previously confirmed as a member of the council, did not need a second Senate confirmation to become chairman.)
The prospect of Republicans making strong gains in Congress in November has complicated the appointment calculation, as nearly all of the unfilled jobs require Senate confirmation. “There’s a normal attrition around midterm,” said Stuart E. Eizenstat, who was President Jimmy Carter’s chief domestic policy adviser and later President Bill Clinton’s deputy treasury secretary.
“What’s different now is the likelihood of a dramatic change in the composition of Congress, and the fact that the Republicans may use each and every one of these to make an economic point.” The tight Congressional calendar also means that some of the jobs might go unfilled for months longer.
By arrangement with the New York Times