President-elect Joe Biden speaks at an event at The Queen Theater on Friday, January 15, 2021 in Wilmington, Del.
Matt Slocum | AP
President-elect Joe Biden will appoint Rohit Chopra as director of the Office of Consumer Financial Protection, taking advantage of a progressive ally of Senator Elizabeth Warren to lead the agency whose creation he advocated.
Chopra, commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, helped launch the agency after the 2008 financial crisis and served as deputy director, where he sounded the alarm over rising levels of student loan debt. The decision comes as Democrats are looking at ways to provide student loan relief to millions of Americans as part of a Covid-19 aid package.
Biden announced the move Monday, along with his intention to appoint Gary Gensler, the former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs banker, improved his oversight of the complicated financial transactions that helped trigger the Great Recession.