Consumer Confidential: Can California force companies to better protect customers? Former CFPB head has hope

Richard Cordray, appointed by then-President Obama in 2011 as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, thinks California is on the right track in creating its own watchdog agency.

"This is a commendably bold step," he told me. "It will put California at the forefront of consumer financial protection at the state level."

Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing creation of a state Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, to be built atop the existing Department of Business Oversight, which has limited jurisdiction over financial firms.

The move, Newsom told me, is a response to efforts by