In the January 11 edition of The Washington Post, a story by Lydia DePillis on the start of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cited Democracy‘s role in the creation and development of the agency.

DePillis noted that the idea for the agency first appeared in an essay by Elizabeth Warren that appeared in our Summer 2007 issue. She reported that Warren’s essay was also instrumental in recruiting staffers to join the fledgling agency:

The bureau began as an idea published in 2007 in Democracy Journal, a small lefty quarterly. Its author, a Harvard Law School bankruptcy professor named Elizabeth Warren—who has since become a Democratic senator from Massachusetts —described a feisty “Financial Product Safety Commission” whose emissaries would be as familiar to Americans as firefighters.

The epic financial crisis of 2007-08, with its roots in unchecked lending by America’s financial sector, brought her idea to the fore; President Obama embraced the plan in June 2009 as a core part of overhauling the financial industry.

Warren’s manifesto became Wally Adeyemo’s best recruiting tool. Once Dodd-Frank passed in 2010, the young deputy executive secretary of the Treasury began laying the groundwork for the agency, then housed in Treasury’s basement. He handed the article to prospects, including Leandra English, a special assistant at the Office of Management and Budget, who joined up.

To read Lydia DePillis’s story, “A Watchdog Grows Up: The Inside Story of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” click here. To read Warren’s original essay, click here.