For starters, he's not in favor of lavishing hundreds of millions of dollars on Elizabeth Warren and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Welch: Do I cut that silly consumer protection agency's budget when they gave that Harvard professor $450 million to run a consumer protection agency. Right out of the barrel! $450 million for a budget! Are you crazy?! You can't do that!

Rose: You're not in favor of consumer protection?

Welch: For $450 million as a budget?! ... Maybe for $50 million.

Welch is also opposed to government handouts, and he believes Obama has been bad at creating jobs. Here's the video:

The guy in question, Rajeev V. Date, "was an active participant in the debate" over this year's Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, The Times says. But also, at the same time, Date was a director of Prosper Marketplace, "a so-called peer-to-peer lender" that experienced a default rate of "more than 25 percent." Yikes!

But then again:

There is no evidence that Mr. Date has violated any ethics or disclosure rules; a Treasury Department official said Mr. Date resigned from the Prosper Marketplace board before joining the bureau and, because he is still a shareholder of Prosper Marketplace, he will recuse himself from working on any issues related to peer-to-peer lending.

Here's a screengrab of Prosper's website.

Dirty, dirty Elizabeth Warren: Last month, Bloomberg revealed that -- shockingly -- she had made $90,000 providing expert testimony in lawsuits against big financial firms. Who would've imagined conflicts of interest would emerge during the establishment of a $500 million agency to regulate the banking industry? Unthinkable.

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

"Thanks to the new law, for the first time ever, we will have a single federal agency charged with writing the rules for all mortgages and all credit cards, regardless of whether they are issued by a federally chartered bank, a state chartered credit union, or a group of unlicensed investors," she said.

Warren also outlined her general approach to financial regulation. As Reuters' Felix Salmon points out, she's interested in outlining principles, rather than hard-and-fast rules, to foster transparent behavior among banks. The distinction is important, Salmon says: "Warren, remember, is a law professor: she knows full well that the main effect of laying down rules is to send a thousand lawyers scurrying to find ways around them. And she's surely also seen the way in which other regulators - the SEC springs to mind - become overrun by lawyers looking for people breaking rules, rather than regulators trying to ensure a clean and level playing field."

The idea is that the Protection Bureau can skirt the bureaucratic mess of trying to spot particular instances of wrongdoing and instead work to get banks be more clear about what their products do. The increased clarity would result in a market where consumers can make informed choices about what banks currently offer. A product that's bad for consumers won't last long if consumers know it's bad for them, and products that are mutually beneficial to consumers and banks will prosper.

This is highly questionable, ethics-wise, according to law professor Richard Painter, who worked in George W. Bush's administration as chief ethics lawyer. "It's highly inappropriate in a position that has this much power," he told Bloomberg.

Warren takes a different view. She says that the reports she wrote as part of her consulting gig didn't contain anything she hadn't said in public, and that she cleared the work with an ethics commission before joining the oversight panel.

mtaylor@observer.com

Twitter: @mbrookstaylor

This is perhaps a little surprising, given that Warren has advocated breaking up too-big-to-fail banks, subjecting them to more scrutiny, raising their taxes, making them take out insurance and proposing that they make transactions with consumers more transparent.

Nevertheless, banks have apparently been receptive to Warren's suggestion that their contracts with consumers not be enormous, indecipherable tomes of legalese buried in their own fine print. She said that many banks realize that the current situation is "unsustainable." Warren is pushing for a standard two-page credit card agreement between banks and consumers.

The ultimate goal is to prevent banks from teasing consumers with low initial rates and then springing usurious fees and rate increases on them over time.

"If we can get these products simpler so that the price is clear up front, then the prices are actually having to compete head to head, and the card issuers that are charging the most are going to find themselves with fewer customers," she said. "That's how markets work."

(h/t Reuters)

Bloomberg asked Warren if she would run crying to Obama if she wound up in a dispute with Geithner. Warren said that she, the President and the Treasury Secretary "see eye-to-eye on this consumer agency. And because of that, we are all trying to push in the same direction."

Sounds good enough, but there's also a fundamental problem. Warren and Geithner will at some stages be working toward divergent goals. Geithner's job is to protect the financial system and by extension the broader economy. Warren, meanwhile, is charged with keeping banks from ripping off consumers too badly -- a cause that could easily eat into banks' profit margins at a time when the system is still recovering from a shock. Sparks have flown before between Warren and Geithner. We'll see how effectively they work together now that they have to.

Warren's strange, wordy title -- Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- reflects the Obama administration's desire to put her at the head of the organization's founding while avoiding the Senate confirmation process needed to officially put her in the director's seat.

As of now, Warren's power will be limited to staffing up the bureau, creating an organizational structure and prioritizing new regulations. In her current role, she won't be allowed to create new regulations. She would have to be selected as the director and then be confirmed by the Senate to make actual specific policy choices.

Wall Street pundits remain confused about Warren's actual role going forward. Some believe she's being groomed for the top spot, while others think she'll be given the boot once the agency is up and running. Felix Salmon offers a reasonable assessment: Her role as architect of the bureau will quell lawmakers' concerns and grease the skids for her eventual nomination.

In a story that somewhat corroborates an earlier report by Bloomberg, The New York Times and ABC are saying that the "assistant to the president" role is one held by other high-powered officials like Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel. In addition to Obama, Warren will report to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, The Times says.

The administration wants to basically give Warren an internship instead of an outright nomination because Congress could easily stymie her confirmation and thus prevent the Protection Bureau from actually trying to protect consumers any time soon.

As for how well Warren will enjoy working for Geithner, here are some videos of their past interactions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz7ruJw6byQ&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJdK8VR5aqY&feature=related

Elizabeth Warren has been a stalwart voice for American consumers and families and she was the architect of the idea that became the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The President will have more to say about the agency and its mission soon.

President Barack Obama may appoint firebrand consumer advocate and AWOL law professor Elizabeth Warren as interim head of the nascent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Bloomberg reports.

Great, right? The person who basically came up with the idea of a federal regulator that protects consumers from malicious banks will head the operation. Almost too perfect. But wait, what's this interim business?

Well, a permanent Warren appointment would carry with it the unpleasant matter of a Senate confirmation, and it's unclear whether Obama has the votes to get Warren through.

The bureau would have a budget of $400 million and was created as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. It will operate under the umbrella of the Federal Reserve.