WASHINGTON — Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor who became a darling of the left for her championship of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, was appointed by President Obama on Friday to oversee the agency’s establishment by mid-2011, until a director is named later. The appointment will allow Ms. Warren, “a janitor’s daughter,” as Mr. Obama called her in a Rose Garden introduction, to effectively get the agency up and running without having to go through a contentious confirmation battle in the Senate — a fight that a leading Democrat, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, predicted she could not win given opposition from Republicans and the financial industry. Mr. Obama said Ms. Warren would recruit staff and initiate policies for regulating mortgages, student loans and other consumer credit products, and would have a voice in picking the first director. The favorite among administration officials is Michael S. Barr, an assistant secretary of Treasury for financial institutions who is an authority on financial regulation and on services for low and moderate-income households. The interim role for Ms. Warren averts a political problem for Mr. Obama in this election season. Rejecting her would have angered many party liberals, who already are demoralized by administration policies they view as too centrist and friendly to Wall Street. Liberal and consumer groups had lobbied hard for her, along with some lawmakers including Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. “This is the boldest step Obama’s taken so far to rein in the big Wall Street banks,” the leaders of the group MoveOn.org, who often are critical of the president, wrote in an e-mail to members. Business groups, while disappointed, privately acknowledged relief that Ms. Warren appeared unlikely to become director. The creation of the bureau was a central piece of the legislation overhauling the financial regulatory system that Mr. Dodd sponsored and Mr. Obama signed into law in July. Its genesis was an article that Ms. Warren wrote a year before the near collapse of the financial system in 2008, a crisis blamed in part on abusive mortgage practices. added by: BRAVATRAVELS
