The U.S. consumer watchdog agency, enmeshed in partisan politics since its creation after the 2008 financial crisis, is now at the center of a tug-of-war over who will lead it. Both the departing director — an Obama appointee often criticized as being too aggressive by banks and Congressional Republicans — and the White House have named interim leaders of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The CFPB was proposed by now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, in her previous job at Harvard Law School, and it was created as part of the laws passed following the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession.