Elizabeth Warren, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Democracy were featured topics on Politico media reporter Keach Hagey’s “On Media” blog July 21. “The journal behind the CFPB” explores Warren’s original idea for a “Financial Product Safety Commission,” which was the focus of her essay in Democracy‘s Summer 2007 issue. Hagey’s article also features interviews with Democracy Editor-in-Chief Michael Tomasky and co-founder Andrei Cherny.

“We were hoping the idea [of a CFPB] would get into the debate, and people would start talking about it, but the idea of watching on TV as Elizabeth and Richard Cordray were in the Rose Garden was beyond our expectations,” Cherny is quoted as saying.

Hagey notes that while President Obama was the last of the three major Democratic primary candidates to embrace the idea of a Bureau, he borrowed the metaphor of a faulty toaster from Warren’s Democracy essay to describe the lack of financial regulation at the time when he appeared on “The Tonight Show” in March 2009.

“It is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and burning down your house,” Warren originally wrote, calling for the regulatory agency that would become the CFPB. “But it is possible to refinance an existing home with a mortgage that has the same one-in-five chance of putting the family out on the street.”

Read Hagey’s Politico blog post here.

Read Warren’s Democracy essay on consumer financial protection here.