Elizabeth Warren Is Watching Our Backs

I seriously like this woman.  Elizabeth Warren was appointed by President Obama as a special advisor to help set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency in charge of financial, credit card, and mortgage oversight.  The agency creation is part of the Dodd Frank Financial Reform Act.  Thought the CFPB won't have rule making power until July 21st of this year, Warren has been an active and vocal advocate for years, and has already been meeting with banking executives and consumer groups.  One of her first goals will be to make the true cost of financial products easier to understand:

  "Think about how long a credit card agreement has become," said Warren.  "It's become pages and pages and pages of largely incomprehensible fine print. In effect, it's paperwork that says "Don't read me," and that's a real problem. Because hiding in that fine print can be anything.  So one of the things we want to push toward is trying to clear out that kind of shrubbery. So that if there are real changes that a company is proposing, they stand out. They're not camouflaged by all those other words." 

Hmm.  Couldn't that philosophy work with mortgage documents too?  Haven't we all seen the "shrubbery" in loan packages?  Endless disclousures, repetitive forms, confusing wording, the same thing over and over.  A mortgage package could be cut from 100 pages to 25 pages and still say the same thing without overwhelming the consumer.  I sure hope that's on her radar as well.

More from ABC News (Oh, and I love the photo.  Seriously, you wanna mess with her?)