CFB Director Nominee Hearing Delayed Posted by AVCU on 1:47 PM

American Banker reports that the Senate nomination hearing for Richard Cordray, who's tabbed to become the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has been postponed until Sept. 6. Originally scheduled for this Thursday, but debt ceiling debates combined with the Senate on recess for the rest of the month, the decision to postpone became expected. 


Cordray is a former Ohio attorney general who heads the enforcement division at the nascent CFPB, was nominated for the bureau's top job last month by President Obama, in place of Obama's original nominee, Elizabeth Warren. His nomination hearing is expected to be contentious. Forty-four Senate Republicans, enough to filibuster a nomination, have vowed to block any nominee to head the CFPB unless Democrats agree to make changes to the agency's structure. Ironically, Cordray was hired at the CFPB by Elizabeth Warren, the person who first proposed the idea of a stand-alone consumer financial protection agency, and was charged with getting the agency up and running. After being passed over for the director's job due to anticipated hearing contention in Congress, Warren is returning to Harvard and is considering a run for the U.S. Senate in 2012.