Welcome to Talking Fed's one-on-one, deep dive discussions with national figures about the most

fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives. I'm your host, Harry Littman.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another talking feds one-on-one. In the flurry of activities

to redo or gut the executive branch, President Trump last week fired the head of the Consumer

Finance Protection Bureau, Roe-Chopra, and there fired the head of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau,

Roe Chopra.

And there's been some talk of what would happen in the wake of that.

But the CFPB has been something of a conservative, on the conservative hit list for some time.

And I wanted both to talk about what we're losing by having it

being apparently disempowered and what it's done for the American people. So we have the perfect

person for that. Rich Cordray was the initial director. He's also a really very dear lifelong friend

from Quirking Days. So very pleased to welcome, Rich Cordray. Good to be. So, I mean,

let's start with a little bit, both in your tenure and that of Chopras.

And if there's anything to mention about the four years when Trump 1.0,

but tell us a little bit about what hole in government the CFPB was designed to fill

and how it has done that, what it sort of record

was up to the present. Sure. And the CFPB was enacted by Congress. It's a statute, it's a law

of the land, that there shall be a consumer financial protection

bureau. And there's about 150 pages of statute with all kinds of shells and requirements as to

what parts of the bureau should be and what functions they have. And much of that is mandatory.

So it's law of the land. Has been since 2010 when it was enacted. I became the first director. There was some back and forth with the Senate over confirming me,

but I became the director in 2012 and served until 2017. Under the first Trump administration, I held over for 11

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