MotherJones, February 19, 2021, This Agency Could Push Banks to Fight Inequality– and Biden Has to Decide Who Should Run It
The two known contenders for the post—Michael Barr, a University of Michigan academic who worked in the Clinton and Obama administrations, and Mehrsa Baradaran, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine—both have long records studying financial regulation and inequality. But they have each come to represent different visions on the left for how to best approach banking regulation, particularly during an economic crisis that has widened racial wealth disparities.
Barr’s defenders point to his record of advocating for banking reform, and to his role in helping establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—the financial watchdog created by Dodd-Frank and the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, herself a vocal foe of big banks. In her 2014 book, Warren called Barr a “behind the scenes hero” of the Dodd-Frank fight, notes Jesse Van Tol, the CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
