Elizabeth Warren, assistant to the President and counselor to the Treasury Secretary for consumer financial protection, will head to Columbus, Ohio tomorrow for her first outside-the-Beltway trip, to speak with consumer and housing groups about the credit markets and the new role of the CFPB.

The trip in and of itself doesn’t seem like much. But I’m certainly intrigued by “housing” and “Ohio.” Attorney General Richard Cordray issued the first lawsuit against a mortgage servicer for fraud and violation of consumer protection laws. In addition, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner was instrumental in getting the White House to veto a bill that may have made it more difficult for borrowers and their attorneys to challenge foreclosure documents in court (by the way, Robert Gibbs mentioned at the time that Warren had a meeting with the President the day before he vetoed that bill). Those offices are both based in Columbus, the state capital. The event won’t be public, but some local press will attend.

I hopped on a conference call with Nancy Pelosi a little late today, and didn’t find much to report. She was focused on the election and the choice voters have to face, and didn’t want to hear much about dissension within the Democratic ranks. Someone asked a question about members running away from the health care bill, and she insisted that “the plural of anecdote is not data,” that “at least 200 members are out there boasting the HC bill,” and that everybody is running their own race in their own district, and some issues work in those districts better than others.

But I have to think Pelosi is none too happy about Democratic candidates, receiving money from Democratic campaign sources, touting their intentions to vote against her for Speaker.

To hear how far out of the mainstream the Obama White House is, just listen to senior adviser Valerie Jarrett describe her conversation with the parents of suicided gay teen Justin Aarberg, and her description of Justin having “made a lifestyle choice.”

I think that lowering the cost of clean energy is necessary and desirable, and that research should go forward. Just don’t expect a lot of cooperation on it. More likely, you’ll hear about taxpayer money financing pie-in-the-sky “liberal dreams.” In other words, expect more lip service.

In addition to dropping MERS today, JP Morgan Chase had an earnings call at which Jamie Dimon was asked questions about JPMC’s foreclosure fraud. Calculated Risk has a transcription (both the AP and WSJ attribute these comments to Dimon, though CFO Douglas Braunstein made comments about the foreclosure fraud as well). But I just wanted to note the contradictory stories Dimon is telling about timing.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a public supporter of repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, bristled at the idea today that a federal district court judge could mandate that repeal.

With less than three weeks to go till the midterm election, President Obama has made the inexplicable choice to undercut the claims of many of his Democratic compatriots that the GOP has been taken over by uncompromising extremists incapable of sensible governing. In an interview with Peter Baker of the New York Times, Obama predicts [...]

It’s fun to put these big numbers together and warn about impending doom, but let’s look at the facts. . . .

Given that we know Timmeh Geither, campaigner against injustice, was officially warned and knew about this conflict, I’d like to know how much he knew about this hedge. The Administration now says it was helpless to stop this kind of fraud, yet it chose not to use at least two sources of leverage (cramdown and stress tests) to control it. Is that because they knew the servicer fraud was an important part of extend and pretend?

Ally Financial (the parent company of GMAC Mortgage) expanded their review of their foreclosure processes to all 50 states, the second mortgage servicer to do so after Bank of America; the Obama Administration supports the 40-state investigation by Attorneys General into foreclosure fraud.