President-elect Joe Biden has selected FTC commissioner Rohit Chopra to be the next director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Obama-era Wall Street regulator Gary Gensler to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Why it matters: Both picks are progressive allies of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and viewed as likely to take aggressive steps to regulate big business.

Background:

• Chopra worked as a consultant at McKinsey before helping Warren set up the CFPB in 2011. He went on to serve as the agency’s assistant director “student loan pointman,” before his nomination to the FTC in 2018.
• Gensler was a partner at Goldman Sachs, where he worked for 18 years before joining the Treasury Department in 1997. He was nominated by President Obama in 2008 to serve as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, where he earned as a reputation as an aggressive regulator and Wall Street foe.

The big picture: Biden is going to attempt to chart an economic policy that’s visibly to the left of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. If he succeeds, it’s going to show up not only in taxes and spending, but also in regulation.

Go deeper: Biden’s radical economic agenda