Elizabeth Warren publishes Unsafe at Any Rate proposing a consumer financial protection agency

Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren published "Unsafe at Any Rate" in the Summer 2007 issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. The essay argued consumer financial products should face safety regulation modeled on the Consumer Product Safety Commission, opening with the line that you cannot buy a toaster with a one-in-five chance of catching fire but can buy a mortgage structured to explode. The proposal became the intellectual blueprint for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that Congress created in 2010.