WASHINGTON — Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is one of four state prosecutors who spoke with Elizabeth Warren about the director’s job of the new federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to a published report.
Warren, a Harvard professor who came up with the idea for the bureau and is setting it up, also spoke with attorneys general from Illinois, Iowa, and North Carolina about the director’s position, but there were no formal interviews conducted and no job offers discussed, two people briefed on the conversations told Bloomberg News.
Coakley’s office declined to comment on the discussions and said she is not interested in being the director of the consumer agency.
“Martha looks forward to working with the new agency as attorney general for the next four years,’’ spokesman Corey Welford told the Globe.
A spokesman for Warren declined to comment.
Warren, special assistant to President Obama and adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, is charged with establishing the consumer agency by July 21.
The director, appointed by Obama, would need to be confirmed by the Senate, a process that could take months.
Coakley and Warren have known each other for years and co-wrote an opinion piece in 2009 arguing that the country needed a new federal consumer agency.
The Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul law passed last year included the bureau. The president appointed Warren in September to oversee its creation but did not make her director of the agency, thereby avoiding a contentious confirmation battle in the Senate that many believed wouldn’t go Warren’s way.
But she is still considered a candidate for the five-year post. — DONOVAN SLACK
Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, said in a letter to Representative Edward Markey that his investigators have questioned government workers and a Norwegian firm the government hired to test the failed blowout preventer.
While no conclusions have been reached, Bromwich said that firm, Det Norske Veritas, admitted it did not disclose the Transocean worker’s role in the forensic work. He said that while he doesn’t believe testing on the device was compromised, the investigation continues.
The 300-ton device that failed to stop the oil spill is still being tested in New Orleans.
Bromwich said his agency is committed to ensuring the integrity of the testing and the broader investigation by a panel looking into the circumstances of the April 20 rig explosion off Louisiana. The blast killed 11 workers and led to 200 million gallons of oil spewing from a well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico.
Markey, a Democrat from Malden who is the ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, sent a letter to Bromwich earlier this month raising concerns about conflicts of interest, including the hands-on role Det Norske Veritas allowed Transocean worker Owen McWhorter to play. The US Chemical Safety Board, which also is monitoring the blowout preventer testing, has raised concerns as well.
Transocean has denied any of its employees acted improperly.
Markey said in a strongly worded statement that the government should be doing a better job of overseeing the examination and argued that conflict-of-interest issues are sure to be brought up in court when the issue of who to blame for the disaster is litigated.
“The real losers from this lapse in judgment will likely be the American people, and specifically the families in the Gulf of Mexico,’’ Markey said. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
The treaty, known as New START, limits each country to 1,550 strategic warheads, down from the current ceiling of 2,200, and reestablishes a system for monitoring that ended in December 2009 with the expiration of a previous arms deal.
The pact was approved by the US Senate days before a lame duck session ended last month. Obama and John F. Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pressed strongly for its passage, persuading a handful of hesitant Republicans to lock in their votes. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
