The response to our campaign to defend Elizabeth Warren from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's attempts to sabotage her appointment to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been overwhelming. Together with our friends at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, over 140,000 people have joined the fight since we launched our campaign on Friday.
The media and progressive insiders are taking notice as we apply growing pressure on the President to appoint Warren, with stories appearing in The New York Times, The Hill, and Talking Points Memo.* But Washington insiders are pushing an alternative candidate who will be much friendlier to Wall Street. This Robert Rubin protégé is currently working within the Treasury Department as Geithner's point man on the effort to stop the Senate from passing strong derivatives regulation reform.
We need to increase the pressure to ensure that Elizabeth Warren (a progressive champion of reform) and not Michael S. Barr (a Robert Rubin-style ally of Wall Street) is appointed. Can you help spread the word to your friends and family?
Click here to post a message on Facebook.
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Or forward the original email below.
The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is going to have enormous flexibility to write and implement consumer protection rules for banks and Wall Street firms. Warren's main rival, Michael S. Barr, first worked at the Treasury under Secretary Robert Rubin, under whose watch some of the very deregulation that caused the current financial meltdown was achieved.
With your help, we are on the verge of dramatically improving consumer protections and giving consumers a strong voice against Wall Street and the big banks. But that won't happen if President Obama passes over Elizabeth Warren and appoints a Robert Rubin ally to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Click here to use our tell-a-friend tool to ask your social networks join our fight.
Thanks for your help to spread the word. Your pressure works.
Adam Quinn
CREDO Action
*For more information:
The Saturday Word: Obstruction and Appointments, The New York Times, July 17, 2010.
Progressives side with Warren, knock Geithner, The Hill, July 16, 2010.
Axelrod: Warren A Candidate To Lead New Consumer Protection Bureau , Talking Points Memo, July 16, 2010.
Huffington Post published an explosive story reporting that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is trying to block President Obama from appointing one of the best consumer watchdogs in the nation to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by Congress to rein in Wall Street. 1 As chair of the bailout oversight panel, Elizabeth Warren held Wall Street executives' feet to the fire and proved time and time again that she was not afraid to speak out. Geithner is a Wall Street insider with long and deep ties to the financial industry. It's outrageous that he would try to sabotage the nomination of Warren, a respected Harvard professor who came up with the idea of establishing a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the first place. It's clear from his handling of the financial crisis that Geithner is more concerned with protecting his friends on Wall Street than standing up for consumers. Many Americans are already wary of Geithner because of his handling of the financial crisis. Now many of us are outraged at his latest action. We can mount a public pressure campaign and win this fight but we need your help. Our allies at the PCCC launched a campaign this morning supporting Elizabeth Warren. They've already started to turn the media narrative around and demonstrate that Americans want a real watchdog in charge of Wall Street regulation. If we can get thousands of petition signatures today we can counter Geithner's attempts to block her appointment. If we fight back now we can make a difference. Help us create overwhelming momentum for Elizabeth Warren. Your pressure works, thanks for working for a better world. Adam Quinn, Campaign Manager CREDO Action |
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/pick_warren/?r_by=10086-179986-rrbaDRx&rc=paste1
FROM THE WASHINGTON POST
Starting consumer protection right
Saturday, July 17, 2010; A08
Starting out right on consumer protection
My worry isn't that the Obama administration will pass over Elizabeth Warren at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and appoint "some banker" instead. My worry is that it will pass over Warren, a renowned Harvard law professor and consumer advocate, and choose some gray bureaucrat or friendly ex-congressman instead. A crusty banker who hates a lot of his former colleagues and has the cutthroat, ruthless personality of lots of bankers might be able to attract other ex-Wall Street types and create an interesting agency. Some former bureaucrat can't.
When you're creating a new institution, if you get good people in the first place, you'll keep getting good people after that. The argument for Warren is that the best young lawyers and consumer advocates revere her and would walk across broken glass for the opportunity to work with her. There's no second choice with anything close to that allure.
I'm not surprised that the administration is conflicted about appointing her, however. A lot of economists -- inside and outside the administration -- think she's too dismissive of financial innovation. Business leaders would lose their minds over the appointment. It'd be a tough sell in the Senate. Of course, this was always what the CFPB was supposed to be about: an independent agency housed inside the Federal Reserve, so that there's a pro-consumer voice to battle it out with the Fed's -- and the rest of the regulatory system's -- natural bent toward banks and financial products.
The case against Warren, in other words, boils down to ambivalence toward the idea of the CFPB. Which makes sense, as it's her idea. That's fair enough, but I'd much rather start by making the CFPB strong and ratcheting it back if necessary than ratcheting it back at the start and pretending we can make it stronger if we need to in the future.
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