Elizabeth Warren held a conference call with bloggers following President Obama's announcement of her appointment as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She related what she talked about with Obama just before they came out to the Rose Garden to make the announcement: in December, 2006 she sent then-Senator Obama a memo on four ways to save the middle class. She said she got an e-mail back from Karen Kornbluth, Obama's domestic policy director saying, "tell us more about number four." Number four was the first outline of what has become the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. "In that sense," Warren said, "his commitment to this consumer agency goes really deep."

One of the primary messages of the call today was that the Bureau will be strong and will be able to face the very powerful Wall Street lobby allied against her because she will have a strong ally in the President. "I'm not out there on my own," she said. "I'm out there with him and he's made that very clear to me.... We will make this work because it's important to the President, to his team, and we'll make this work." She reminded bloggers that when she began lobbying for the bureau at the outset of the financial reform debate, everyone, including very specifically Barney Frank, told her that getting this agency was a "pipe dream," that the lobbyists were too powerful and that it would never happen.

Warren answered some of the questions about the authority she will have in establishing the agency when she is not officially director and is answerable to both Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner. She stressed that her role will be specifically to set up this bureau, although she will also be part of Obama's team of economic advisors, and will meet with the team to discuss broader economic issue. Her primary role, however, is to establish this bureau and she will have the authority to hire and fire, establish a budget and get the agency started. She stressed again, "I've talked with the president and he and I have same vision about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and I'm confident that he has given me the tools to get the job done, and ultimately that's what this is about--the samed shared vision and now he's given me the tools to get the job done."

Warren clarified the scope of the consumer bureau's very wide jurisdiction surrounding debt and credit products, as well as credit reporting. While the bureau won't have jurisdiction over investment products and insurance, she thinks that the work of the bureau will spill over into these markets because of consumer demand. When people get used to two-page credit card agreements, and simple-to-understand mortgage contracts, she says, they'll start to demand that level of transparency in all financial products.

David Dayen, who has been doing phenomenal work following the failures of the HAMP program asked what "we can do right now to help customers who are being ripped off and jerked around by the banks under the program." Warren noted that her congressional TARP oversight panel has already done three reports on HAMP, and "has not been shy about calling out shortcomings in program." While she didn't speak specifically on policy solutions--and noted that she wasn't in a position yet to do so--she stressed that she's "very pleased to make this shift from being on the outside ot being on the inside," and will be having lunch with Geithner on Monday. So bets are pretty good that on Monday she will be having a serious conversation with the Secretary about the problems with HAMP and what role she and the bureau might have in correcting them.

Finally, asked about when we could expect an announcement on a permanent director for the bureau and whether it might be her, she demurred, and brought the focus back to right now. "The law is clear," she said "that Congress authorized the administration to get started helping American families, get started repairing a broken credit market. I want to be a voice for American families, that's my job right now all I can tell you is that my first priority is to be a voice for American families and get this agency started. We'll get the pieces in place and start to build."

It's hard to imagine a more effective voice for American families, and it's heartening to know that she will be one of the key voices in the President's ear on economic issues for at least the near term, if not the next several years. Warren's conviction that she will have Obama's ear, and that she has the authority and the backing of Obama to create this new agency is most definitely good news.