Patrick McHenryChairman

Washington, July 7, 2011 - The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (the government bureaucracy that’s supposed to “nudge” you to make decisions about your life that it deems are correct) doesn’t start operating until July 21.  The President still has not even nominated someone to lead the agency yet.  But it does have an office softball team and it is hiring at a rate of more than 80 new government workers per month.  (Is this the Obama jobs plan?) That may explain why the CFPB has already outgrown its office space in two buildings!

From the Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover story out this week:

“[Elizabeth] Warren is not waiting for permission to do the job she may never get. She and her small team have hired hundreds of people, at a recent clip of more than 80 per month. The CFPB has already outgrown its office space and is divided between two buildings in downtown Washington - with branches to be opened across the country. A fledgling staff of researchers is cranking out the CFPB's first reports, and its first bank examiners are being trained. Meanwhile, the office softball team has compiled a 2-3 record.... While Washington bickers, Warren has built the CFPB largely to her specs, and almost entirely free of oversight interference from Congress and the Administration, which devotes most of its attention to fixing the economy.”