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Obama picks former Ohio attorney general to head consumer agency

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Sunday that he would nominate Richard Cordray, the former attorney general of Ohio, to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, passing over Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law professor who was the driving force behind the agency's creation.
Cordray came to national attention for his aggressive investigations of mortgage-foreclosure practices while he was attorney general. He had already joined the watchdog agency, which starts formal operations on Thursday, as the leader of its enforcement division.
The decision to pass over Warren — who conceived the bureau, championed its creation and orchestrated its establishment for the last year as a White House adviser — reflects political realities.
Her candidacy was passionately supported by liberal members of Congress and consumer advocacy groups. But she never won the full support of the president or his senior advisers, particularly Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in part because of her independence and outspokenness, which at times put her at odds with the administration.
Also, since last year Obama has been trying to rebuild relations with the business community after the fights early in his term over health-care and financial regulations. And Republicans have vowed to block her nomination because they say that her criticisms of the banking industry showed a lack of fairness.
Putting a director in place is critical because the agency will not gain the full measure of its powers until the Senate confirms a nominee. The agency will be able to supervise the compliance of banks with existing laws, but the Dodd-Frank financial legislation that created the agency dictates that it cannot write new rules or supervise other financial companies without a director.
Republicans made clear on Sunday that they were no more likely to confirm Cordray than Warren. Forty-four Republican senators have signed a letter saying they would refuse to vote on any nominee to lead the bureau, demanding instead that Democrats agree to overhaul the agency's management structure to replace a single leader with a board of directors.
"Until President Obama addresses our concerns by supporting a few reasonable structural changes, we will not confirm anyone to lead it," Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who is the ranking member on the Banking Committee, said Sunday in a written statement. "No accountability, no confirmation."
Some of Warren's supporters expressed support for Cordray.
"Elizabeth Warren was the best qualified to lead this bureau that she conceived — and we imagine Richard Cordray would agree," said Stephanie Taylor, a consumer advocate who led an online campaign that collected 350,000 signatures on a petition calling for the president to nominate Warren. "That said, Rich Cordray has been a strong ally of Elizabeth Warren's, and we hope he will continue her legacy of holding Wall Street accountable."
Warren plans to return to teaching at Harvard in the fall, an administration official said.
Cordray, 52, joined the consumer bureau in December after narrowly losing a re-election bid for Ohio attorney general to Michael DeWine, a Republican who suggested during the campaign that Cordray was anti-business.
In an interview at the time, Cordray described his new federal job as a layover, saying, "I do expect to be running for office in the next cycle."
After more than a decade in private practice and local political office, Cordray won a special election in 2008 to become Ohio's attorney general and soon started a series of high-profile investigations of financial companies.
He accused the insurance company Marsh & McLennan of publishing fictitious quotes to suppress competition. He accused credit-ratings agencies of overstating the value of mortgage-backed securities, resulting in massive losses for their investors, including Ohio pension funds. He accused Bank of America of acquiring Merrill Lynch without telling investors the full extent of the investment bank's problems.

Obama meets Dalai Lama despite China's warning


China has responded angrily to a meeting between US President Barack Obama and Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
The Chinese foreign ministry described the meeting in Washington as a gross interference in China's internal affairs.
The White House said the talks underscored President Obama's strong support for the preservation of what it called Tibet's unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity.

Muthoot Finance to offer loans against gold ETF units

Muthoot Finance Ltd, which claims to be the largest gold finance NBFC in India, on Friday said it will now offer loans against Gold ETF (Exchange Traded Funds) units as security.
Launching the service, Muthoot Finance Ltd Managing Director George Alexander Muthoot told reporters here that the loans against gold ETF units was a scheme through which Muthoot Finance plans to venture into a totally new segment of gold financing, which would not only add value, but also enable the company to service the financial requirements of newer customer segments.
The new scheme would come into force by this month end and would enable the customers to avail finance at the rate of 15 per cent interest against their Gold ETF units to the extent of 85 per cent of the Net Asset Value of ETFs.
Muthoot has tied up with Benchmark, for offering the service, which would be available at 30 branches of Muthoot all over the country in the first phase and would be later extended to all 3,000 of its branches.
He said the company expects to extend up to Rs 1,000 crore worth of loans this fiscal.
Gold ETFs have seen a progressive rise in popularity throughout the country over the past two to three years, attaining a whopping size of over Rs 5,000 crore as of June this year, resulting out of active investments from over 320,000 investors, according to National Stock Exchange Assistant Vice-President and Southern Region Head Sunita Anand.
Benchmark Asset Management Company Pvt Ltd National Head-Sales Anil Desai said the golf ETF loan scheme by Muthoot Finance Ltd would act as a source for investors in gold ETFs to raise funds against their investment units during times of need, instead of selling those units.
Commonly referred as ‘paper gold’, gold ETFs are mutual fund units issued by asset management companies against 99.5 per cent purity physical gold deposited with a SEBI-registered custodian.
Gold ETFs are listed and traded on stock exchanges and can be bought and sold like stocks on a real time basis.
These funds are passively managed and mirror domestic gold prices. By enabling investors to invest in gold without holding it in physical form, gold ETFs offer a rather unique investment opportunity to investors.

Facebook bans Google+ ad

Ingenuity is surely something to be admired. Commercial ingenuity is something to be revered.
Sometimes, though, it seems that certain tech companies only revere their own ingenuity. That seems to be the case with Facebook, which, as reported by TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld, has removed a piece of fine commercial ingenuity from its site.
App developer Michael Lee Johnson, conscious of the need to be big on Google+ or be nobody, wondered what the best way to levitate his Google+ circles might be. He hit upon a fine idea: he placed an ad on Facebook. It was a simple thing that was headlined: "Add Michael to Google+."
The copy read: "If you're lucky enough to have a Google+ account, add Michael Lee Johnson, Internet Geek, App Developer, Technological Virtuoso."
If those words weren't enough to persuade Facebook users that Johnson was a must for their Google+, he added a fine picture of himself wearing a jaunty cap.



You're not guessing what happened with the ad, are you? You know what happened, don't you? Facebook didn't, according to Johnson, merely erase this heinous horse of Troy from its pages. It reportedly banned all his other campaigns too.
The message he received read as follows: "Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions."
Because my life's purpose is to be helpful, I scanned Facebook's Terms of Use and Advertising just to see what specific clause might have been besmirched by Johnson's chutzpah.
Perhaps it was Clause 11 in the "Special Provisions Applicable to Advertisers" section: "You will not issue any press release or make public statements about your relationship with Facebook without written permission." Johnson had shamefully declared on Google+ that he was placing the ad.
Perhaps it was Clause 4d of Facebook's Advertising Guidelines: "Ads cannot insult, harass, or threaten a user." He was, some might say, harrassing and insulting Facebook loyalists by his mere suggestion that there might be another place to socially network.
Or perhaps Facebook, its nose feeling tweaked, merely decided to reach for 6a of the same Advertising Guidelines: "We may refuse ads at any time for any reason, including our determination that they promote competing products or services or negatively affect our business or relationship with our users."
Still, ejecting all of Johnson's campaigns seems a touch cruel. Perhaps Johnson will consider an action against Facebook for emotional distress and, well, damage to his reputation.
This he will have to place, so Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities tells me, in a court in Santa Clara County. For now, Johnson's only public statements have been: "LOL." Oh, and "Facebook. You Suck."
1,460 people currently have Johnson in their Google+ circles. I cannot find Google+'s No. 1 personality, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, among them.