Elizabeth Warren on new CFPA; The American people can have not just one, but thousands of seats at the table.

Professor Elizabeth Warren, consumer watch-dog and champion of consumer financial protection rights, tasked with the job of setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency shares her views on the importance of using technology and transparency to build a "serious and tough" CFPA.

At the Mario Savio Memorial Lecture in Berkeley  Prof Warren told a large audience;

"Anyone who wants to understand why America's middle class is not bouncing back from the crash of 2008 should remember that unlike the boom and bust cycles of the past, middle class families this time had no parachute when they were pushed of the cliff...

"Families have been pushed and squeezed and hammered for a generation, but we have a moment right here and right now to turn a corner. The Consumer Financial Protection agency will not solve everything but it gives us an opportunity to plug a big hole in the bottom of the economic boat for millions of American families."

An excerpt: Who Has a Voice?

Let's start with who has a seat at the table.

The industry hires lawyers and lobbyists, who produce papers and research and who monitor everything that happens. The industry pushes its views to the agency and to the public about the right direction for the agency, and, as you might expect, the right direction turns out to be the one that is good for the industry. That's the industry's right, but for the American public, those who aren't hiring lawyers and lobbyists, the field is tilted against them. The public, the people to be served, far too often fade into the background.

When an agency loses sight of the public it is designed to serve, academics say it has been captured.The new consumer agency can develop tools to help level the playing field and discourage capture. The American people can have not just one, but thousands of seats at the table.  Even before the agency officially opens its doors, it can solicit information from the American people about the challenges and frustrations that they face with consumer financial products day in and day out--and it can organize that information and put it to good use.

Watch the lecture or read in its entirety below;

  Elizabeth Warren's lecture at Berkeley [10/28/2010]