White House adviser Elizabeth Warren has been meeting with investors, bankers and consumer advocates as she works to set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but on Thursday she shifted her attention to technology industry leaders in Silicon Valley.
Warren planned to meet with Google Inc.'s chief economist, Hal Varian, who has highlighted a new "google price index" — compiled through the use of online shopping data — as a way to measure inflation. She was also planning to have lunch with a group of technology executives.
Her main focus was on finding ways to ensure the consumer bureau has high-tech features.
In her meetings with technology executives in California, Warren was seeking advice on how to use technology to help the agency quickly analyze and collect data it can then use to detect market problems that could affect consumers.
"I want to explore every tool that might repair the broken consumer credit market, and technology can play a key role in creating a more resilient agency and empowering consumers to engage in their own enforcement of market norms," Warren wrote in a blog about the White House.
