VIDEO of Elizabeth Warren at the Greater Boston Labor Day breakfast. This lady is a BOLD PROGRESSIVE and we need to elect her to the Senate!!!
BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label elizabeth warren. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elizabeth warren. Show all posts
08 September 2011
25 August 2011
Elizabeth Warren Receives Major Union Endorsement Before Launching Senate Candidacy 25AUG11
RUN MS WARREN, PLEASE!!!!!
WASHINGTON -- Even before formally entering the Massachusetts Senate race, consumer advocate and Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren has picked up a major union endorsement.
The former Obama administration official who spearheaded the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, received the unsolicited backing of the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) on Tuesday. The endorsement came before Warren, a Democrat, has said whether or not she will actually challenge Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) for his seat. (Her announcement will come after Labor Day, advisers say, though it's widely expected that she will decide to run.) Announced just minutes after a 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck the east coast, the MNA's decision was barely noticed by the political press.
And yet, the union's endorsement could have ripple effects on the Democratic primary in that critical Senate race. The union has 23,000 members, making it the largest association of registered nurses in the state. By coming out in favor of Warren before she announces her decision, a union official explained, members are "hoping it will show her up front what kind of support she has and encourage her to jump in."
It also signals to the rest of the primary field, which includes Newton Mayor Setti Warren, social entrepreneur Alan Khazei and State Representative Thomas Conroy, that the consumer advocate -- despite her political inexperience -- could present a formidable opponent.
The MNA's board decided to endorse Warren last Thursday, the official said, after a meeting in which attendees discussed her prospective candidacy at length. (Warren had launched an exploratory committee earlier that day.)
"We had no conversation with her prior to then," the official said. "The only contact we had with her was after the fact."
WASHINGTON -- Even before formally entering the Massachusetts Senate race, consumer advocate and Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren has picked up a major union endorsement.
The former Obama administration official who spearheaded the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, received the unsolicited backing of the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) on Tuesday. The endorsement came before Warren, a Democrat, has said whether or not she will actually challenge Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) for his seat. (Her announcement will come after Labor Day, advisers say, though it's widely expected that she will decide to run.) Announced just minutes after a 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck the east coast, the MNA's decision was barely noticed by the political press.
And yet, the union's endorsement could have ripple effects on the Democratic primary in that critical Senate race. The union has 23,000 members, making it the largest association of registered nurses in the state. By coming out in favor of Warren before she announces her decision, a union official explained, members are "hoping it will show her up front what kind of support she has and encourage her to jump in."
It also signals to the rest of the primary field, which includes Newton Mayor Setti Warren, social entrepreneur Alan Khazei and State Representative Thomas Conroy, that the consumer advocate -- despite her political inexperience -- could present a formidable opponent.
The MNA's board decided to endorse Warren last Thursday, the official said, after a meeting in which attendees discussed her prospective candidacy at length. (Warren had launched an exploratory committee earlier that day.)
"We had no conversation with her prior to then," the official said. "The only contact we had with her was after the fact."
23 June 2011
Tell Obama: We Want Warren! 16JUN11
THE banking and financial industries and wall street, through their gop and tea-bagger political whores they own in congress are preventing the appointment of Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The fact that no criminal charges have been brought against the top officials of the banking and financial industries that brought the country this latest recession is proof Elizabeth Warren must be appointed to head the CFPB. Click the link to sign the petition from BanksterUSA....
A big reason why we have suffered through the financial crisis and Great Recession is that banking regulatory agencies were looking out for short-term profits at big banks - not looking out for consumers, investors or economic stability. The American public wants and needs an effective Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to prevent rip-off financial products with tricks, traps, and hidden fees. Elizabeth Warren stands up for Main Street, and she is the right person to lead the CFPB. Elizabeth Warren will stand up for consumers and hold Wall Street accountable.
A big reason why we have suffered through the financial crisis and Great Recession is that banking regulatory agencies were looking out for short-term profits at big banks - not looking out for consumers, investors or economic stability. The American public wants and needs an effective Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to prevent rip-off financial products with tricks, traps, and hidden fees. Elizabeth Warren stands up for Main Street, and she is the right person to lead the CFPB. Elizabeth Warren will stand up for consumers and hold Wall Street accountable.
09 June 2011
Rep. Elijah Cummings says new financial protection bureau will have budget equal to just 1 percent of industry's fees 8JUN11
ALL the political whores in congress owned by wall street and the banking / financial industry, and their tea-bagger allies are running a propaganda campaign against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau / CFPB and the woman who should head the agency, Elizabeth Warren, as an expansion of big government and extremely costly, too expensive to exist considering the budget problems we are facing (caused by the greed of wall street and the banking / financial industry in the U.S.). Check this out from PolitiFact...
Elizabeth Warren is President Barack Obama's pick to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We checked a comparison of the agency's budget to various fees levied by financial-services firms.
The budget for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau "is only about 1 percent of the amount banks generate just from late fees and overdraft fees."
Elijah Cummings on Tuesday, May 24th, 2011 in a congressional subcommittee hearingRep. Elijah Cummings says new financial protection bureau will have budget equal to just 1 percent of industry's fees
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Elizabeth Warren is President Barack Obama's pick to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We checked a comparison of the agency's budget to various fees levied by financial-services firms.During a contentious hearing on May 24, 2011, members of a congressional oversight subcommittee sparred with Elizabeth Warren, who is President Barack Obama’s pick to head a new federal agency charged with protecting consumers from abusive practices in the financial services sector.
The hearing attracted media attention for a testy exchange between the subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., and Warren, who has become a champion of those who want to see stricter oversight of Wall Street. Her official appointment as director has been blocked by Republicans, who want to see changes in how the new agency operates, though she has been working to get the agency up and running as assistant to the president and special adviser to the Treasury Secretary.
A reader pointed us to one statistic presented at the hearing that purported to show the imbalance between federal regulators and Wall Street.
Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the full oversight panel, said that the new agency’s "budget is only about 1 percent of the amount banks generate just from late fees and overdraft fees. … I have to ask you: How in the world will you be able to compete against this Goliath when you are so mismatched?"
We wondered whether there was such an imbalance.
We were able to track down sources for both types of fees.
R.K. Hammer, a privately held bankcard consulting firm, tracks credit card penalty fees. The firm found that card penalty fees assessed by the industry during 2010 totaled $22.5 billion.
We should note that the figure we’re using from R.K. Hammer -- what the firm calls "penalty fees" -- is an umbrella category that includes various types of fees. However, the firm says that late fees -- the category specifically cited by Cummings -- account for more than 90 percent of penalty fees. So we’ll reduce the amount slightly, to an estimated $20.3 billion in late fees.
Meanwhile, the economic research firm Moebs Services tracks data on overdraft fees. The firm projected that for 2010, overdraft fees will total $35.4 billion.
If you add these two figures, the total is $55.7 billion. To make sure we weren’t double-counting, we checked with both firms, and they confirmed that the two estimates do not overlap.
What about the agency’s budget? We turned to the agency’s website for the answer.
Budget documents posted there say that the agency’s estimated budget for fiscal year 2011 is $142.8 million, a number that Obama wants to increase to $329 million in fiscal year 2012.
Using the 2011 figure, the agency’s budget is three-tenths of 1 percent of the industry fee totals. Using the larger figure for 2012 -- which is only a proposal -- it works out to six-tenths of 1 percent.
Both figures are well under the 1 percent threshold Cummings cited. And the fees in Cummings’ comparison are just a small slice of the resources available to financial institutions. According to the Department of Commerce, profits in the finance and insurance sector for 2010 -- not revenues, just profits -- amounted to $366.8 billion.
We’ll note here that we're not ruling on whether a budget that’s equal to 1 percent of penalty and overdraft fees is too little (or too much) to carry out the agency’s tasks. But on the specific comparison Cummings made, we found that he was accurate and even understated the disparity slightly. He’s correct that the new agency’s budget is "only about 1 percent of the amount banks generate just from late fees and overdraft fees." So we rate his statement True.
Subjects: Federal Budget, Financial Regulation, Regulation
Sources:
Elijah Cummings, comments in transcript of a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts of Public and Private Programs, May 24, 2011 (accessed via Lexis-Nexis)
R.K. Hammer, "Card Penalty Fees Soften Slightly In 2010," June 2, 2011
Moebs Services, "Overdraft Fee Revenue Drops to 2008 Levels for Banks and Credit Unions," Sep. 15, 2010
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, "Program Summary by Budget Activity," accessed June 8, 2011
Bureau of Economic Analysis, "National Income and Product Accounts Table 6.16D: Corporate Profits by Industry," accessed June 8, 2011
Interview with John Lopez, spokesman for Moebs Services, June 8, 2011
Interview with Bob Hammer, CEO of R.K. Hammer, June 8, 2011
Written by: Louis Jacobson
Researched by: Louis Jacobson
Edited by: Martha Hamilton
The hearing attracted media attention for a testy exchange between the subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., and Warren, who has become a champion of those who want to see stricter oversight of Wall Street. Her official appointment as director has been blocked by Republicans, who want to see changes in how the new agency operates, though she has been working to get the agency up and running as assistant to the president and special adviser to the Treasury Secretary.
A reader pointed us to one statistic presented at the hearing that purported to show the imbalance between federal regulators and Wall Street.
Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the full oversight panel, said that the new agency’s "budget is only about 1 percent of the amount banks generate just from late fees and overdraft fees. … I have to ask you: How in the world will you be able to compete against this Goliath when you are so mismatched?"
We wondered whether there was such an imbalance.
We were able to track down sources for both types of fees.
R.K. Hammer, a privately held bankcard consulting firm, tracks credit card penalty fees. The firm found that card penalty fees assessed by the industry during 2010 totaled $22.5 billion.
We should note that the figure we’re using from R.K. Hammer -- what the firm calls "penalty fees" -- is an umbrella category that includes various types of fees. However, the firm says that late fees -- the category specifically cited by Cummings -- account for more than 90 percent of penalty fees. So we’ll reduce the amount slightly, to an estimated $20.3 billion in late fees.
Meanwhile, the economic research firm Moebs Services tracks data on overdraft fees. The firm projected that for 2010, overdraft fees will total $35.4 billion.
If you add these two figures, the total is $55.7 billion. To make sure we weren’t double-counting, we checked with both firms, and they confirmed that the two estimates do not overlap.
What about the agency’s budget? We turned to the agency’s website for the answer.
Budget documents posted there say that the agency’s estimated budget for fiscal year 2011 is $142.8 million, a number that Obama wants to increase to $329 million in fiscal year 2012.
Using the 2011 figure, the agency’s budget is three-tenths of 1 percent of the industry fee totals. Using the larger figure for 2012 -- which is only a proposal -- it works out to six-tenths of 1 percent.
Both figures are well under the 1 percent threshold Cummings cited. And the fees in Cummings’ comparison are just a small slice of the resources available to financial institutions. According to the Department of Commerce, profits in the finance and insurance sector for 2010 -- not revenues, just profits -- amounted to $366.8 billion.
We’ll note here that we're not ruling on whether a budget that’s equal to 1 percent of penalty and overdraft fees is too little (or too much) to carry out the agency’s tasks. But on the specific comparison Cummings made, we found that he was accurate and even understated the disparity slightly. He’s correct that the new agency’s budget is "only about 1 percent of the amount banks generate just from late fees and overdraft fees." So we rate his statement True.
About this statement:
Published: Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 at 4:26 p.m.Subjects: Federal Budget, Financial Regulation, Regulation
Sources:
Elijah Cummings, comments in transcript of a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts of Public and Private Programs, May 24, 2011 (accessed via Lexis-Nexis)
R.K. Hammer, "Card Penalty Fees Soften Slightly In 2010," June 2, 2011
Moebs Services, "Overdraft Fee Revenue Drops to 2008 Levels for Banks and Credit Unions," Sep. 15, 2010
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, "Program Summary by Budget Activity," accessed June 8, 2011
Bureau of Economic Analysis, "National Income and Product Accounts Table 6.16D: Corporate Profits by Industry," accessed June 8, 2011
Interview with John Lopez, spokesman for Moebs Services, June 8, 2011
Interview with Bob Hammer, CEO of R.K. Hammer, June 8, 2011
Written by: Louis Jacobson
Researched by: Louis Jacobson
Edited by: Martha Hamilton
02 June 2011
President Obama: Appoint Elizabeth Warren to Lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from PCCC 2JUN11
ELIZABETH WARREN is the only person qualified to head the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau CFPB. Check out this call to action by PCCC and click the link to sign on calling on Pres Obama to appoint her now. For more on her qualifications just search for Elizabeth Warren on this blog.....
Check out this AMAZING momentum on our letter urging President Obama to give Elizabeth Warren a recess appointment:
Tomorrow, Congressional Progressive Caucus leaders will announce our letter's progress at a press conference and then meet with the President! Can you help us reach 250,000 signers by tomorrow morning's big event? Click here to sign.
Thanks for being a bold progressive.
-- Stephanie Taylor, Adam Green, Matt Wall, and the PCCC team
Check out this AMAZING momentum on our letter urging President Obama to give Elizabeth Warren a recess appointment:
Washington Post: "10,000 people an hour in the first five hours..."
Washington Post: "75,000 signatures in eight hours."
Slate.com: "100,000 signatures strong now"
American Banker: "150,000 signatures in less than 24 hours"
Politico: "175,000 signatures supporting her in just two days"
Huffington Post: "over 225,000 petitioners calling on Obama to go around Senate Republicans and just name her to the bureau she created already."
Now we're at 237,000 signatures!Washington Post: "75,000 signatures in eight hours."
Slate.com: "100,000 signatures strong now"
American Banker: "150,000 signatures in less than 24 hours"
Politico: "175,000 signatures supporting her in just two days"
Huffington Post: "over 225,000 petitioners calling on Obama to go around Senate Republicans and just name her to the bureau she created already."
Tomorrow, Congressional Progressive Caucus leaders will announce our letter's progress at a press conference and then meet with the President! Can you help us reach 250,000 signers by tomorrow morning's big event? Click here to sign.
Thanks for being a bold progressive.
-- Stephanie Taylor, Adam Green, Matt Wall, and the PCCC team
15 May 2011
Has Elizabeth Warren Won Over the Banks? 6MAI11
THE appointment of Elizabeth Warren to head the CFPB, and her approval by the Senate will be one of the shinning moments of the Obama administration because it will be an example of government doing what is needed for the people and the banking industry without the influence of of politics. Elizabeth Warren is nobody's puppet, she is actually committed to doing the best she possibly can for the nation. Oh that her morals and courage and commitment could be cloned!!!! From Mother Jones....
Today, Beverage considers himself a Warren convert. He openly praises Warren—who was appointed by the White House to get the bureau up and running but has not been nominated to head it—saying she is "far and away" the most qualified person to become the bureau's permanent director. "Ms. Warren has demonstrated that she is willing to work as hard as possible for the benefit of consumers, consumers' families, and community banks," Beverage says. "She would be an outstanding director, and I have encouraged both of our US senators to look past political rhetoric and look at what the woman has done."
Beverage's reversal reflects a noticeable thaw in relations between Warren and parts of the banking industry. This week, Camden Fine, president and CEO of the influential Independent Community Bankers Association, told a gathering of 1,000 bankers that the odds Obama would nominate Warren were "better than even," later remarking to American Banker that "you would have to look favorably on a [Warren] nomination because clearly she understands our model." Frank Keating, the head of the American Bankers Association, told a reporter that the ABA would support Warren if she were confirmed as CFPB director by the Senate. And Robert Palmer, who heads the Community Bankers Association of Ohio, captured the mood of small banks when he told Bloomberg Businessweek that if Warren "leaves, and the direction changes, we're not going to be very receptive."
Industry reps who once thought she was "akin to the Antichrist" now can't stop praising the consumer protection chief. What gives?
On her first day running the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Elizabeth Warren met with a group of bankers from her home state, Oklahoma. Going into that meeting, Roger Beverage, president of the Oklahoma Bankers Association, feared the havoc Warren, who had developed a reputation as a fierce consumer champion, would soon wreak upon his state's banks. He and his colleagues in the banking industry, he recalls, "had this vision that she was akin to the Antichrist."Today, Beverage considers himself a Warren convert. He openly praises Warren—who was appointed by the White House to get the bureau up and running but has not been nominated to head it—saying she is "far and away" the most qualified person to become the bureau's permanent director. "Ms. Warren has demonstrated that she is willing to work as hard as possible for the benefit of consumers, consumers' families, and community banks," Beverage says. "She would be an outstanding director, and I have encouraged both of our US senators to look past political rhetoric and look at what the woman has done."
Beverage's reversal reflects a noticeable thaw in relations between Warren and parts of the banking industry. This week, Camden Fine, president and CEO of the influential Independent Community Bankers Association, told a gathering of 1,000 bankers that the odds Obama would nominate Warren were "better than even," later remarking to American Banker that "you would have to look favorably on a [Warren] nomination because clearly she understands our model." Frank Keating, the head of the American Bankers Association, told a reporter that the ABA would support Warren if she were confirmed as CFPB director by the Senate. And Robert Palmer, who heads the Community Bankers Association of Ohio, captured the mood of small banks when he told Bloomberg Businessweek that if Warren "leaves, and the direction changes, we're not going to be very receptive."
While Warren's nomination was too-toxic-to-touch mere months ago, the momentum of the past few weeks could be enough to convince the White House to tap her for the job. Whomever Obama picks, he'll need to do it soon: The deadline for having a permanent CFPB director in place is July 21, according to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. But no matter who the nominee is, he or she faces massive opposition in Congress, with Republicans maneuvering to block not just Warren but any CFPB nominee if their demands to weaken the bureau are not met.
The warming to Warren is due, in large part, to a months-long outreach campaign aimed at members of the banking industry. According to calendars posted on the CFPB's website, Warren's schedule has included 150 appointments with industry officials since her first day in September—phone calls, in-person meetings, industry conference speeches, even visits to local bank branches. She's spoken with everyone from Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan to the head of the American Bankers Association to community bankers in states from Maine to Texas.
The charm offensive appears to be paying off—and at precisely the right time.
Michael Grant, president of the National Bankers Association, which represents more than 100 minority- and women-owned banks throughout the country, is another fan. He met with Warren in February and says he would support her as the nominee to run the CFPB because of her "genuine concern for protecting the rights for consumers and for her appreciation of the role banks play in the financial infrastructure of this country." Grant adds, "She's a win-win both for our industry and for the consumer if she is nominated and made permanent chief."
Paul Hickman, president and CEO of the Arizona Bankers Association, says he, too, came away impressed after he and a group of Arizona bankers and business leaders met with Warren in Washington. A former staffer for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Hickman says Warren went a long way toward allaying the industry's fears of a consumer bureau run amok that would slap banks with new regulations and bury them in paperwork. "I thought Elizabeth Warren did a really good job of letting the members of that meeting know, and the business people of Arizona know, that her mission was not to somehow suppress community banks," Hickman recalls.
But for some state banking chiefs, Warren's outreach has changed their mind about her but not about the CFPB itself. George Beattie, president and CEO of the Nebraska Bankers Association, told Mother Jones last fall that, in his view, Warren simply didn't understand community banks. Today, he's more positive about Warren, noting her "better appreciation for what banks in this country do for their communities." He worries more about having a single director run the CFPB, whether that's Warren or not. Beattie says he'd prefer a panel of directors run the bureau, like the Securities and Exchange Commission, though he ultimately thinks the bureau should be scrapped altogether. "The congress has created an exceedingly strong governmental agency with little oversight," he says. "I think that's a bad thing for this country regardless of who runs it."
House Republicans agree with Beattie. On Thursday, a House financial services subcommittee passed a trio of bills that would replace the single director with a bipartisan five-person commission, give a separate council of financial regulators veto power on new regulations by the bureau, and restrict the CFPB's power until the Senate confirms Obama's nominee to be director. So, too, do Senate Republicans. Earlier this week, they sent a letter to Obama saying they'd oppose any CFPB nominee until the bureau's power was scaled back.
To be sure, huge hurdles remain between Warren and the nomination. Republicans in Congress almost universally oppose her nomination. (She has, however, earned tepid praise in the past from Senate GOPers including Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Bob Corker of Tennessee.) At this point, Senate GOPers appear to willing to do anything to undermine the CFPB and prevent a strong consumer advocate like Warren from becoming its director, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to see how GOPers' demands will be met and a nominee confirmed before the July deadline. And of course on Wall Street, she has no shortage of enemies among the nation's largest banks.
But even if Warren only wins over some bankers and not others, leaving the industry conflicted on her nomination, that could actually be a victory. "There was universal opposition to Dodd-Frank," says a person who's worked closely with Warren in the past. "There was universal opposition to Warren getting the bureau started. At the end of the day, if the banking industry is fractured on her nomination, that's just fine."
The warming to Warren is due, in large part, to a months-long outreach campaign aimed at members of the banking industry. According to calendars posted on the CFPB's website, Warren's schedule has included 150 appointments with industry officials since her first day in September—phone calls, in-person meetings, industry conference speeches, even visits to local bank branches. She's spoken with everyone from Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan to the head of the American Bankers Association to community bankers in states from Maine to Texas.
The charm offensive appears to be paying off—and at precisely the right time.
Michael Grant, president of the National Bankers Association, which represents more than 100 minority- and women-owned banks throughout the country, is another fan. He met with Warren in February and says he would support her as the nominee to run the CFPB because of her "genuine concern for protecting the rights for consumers and for her appreciation of the role banks play in the financial infrastructure of this country." Grant adds, "She's a win-win both for our industry and for the consumer if she is nominated and made permanent chief."
Paul Hickman, president and CEO of the Arizona Bankers Association, says he, too, came away impressed after he and a group of Arizona bankers and business leaders met with Warren in Washington. A former staffer for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Hickman says Warren went a long way toward allaying the industry's fears of a consumer bureau run amok that would slap banks with new regulations and bury them in paperwork. "I thought Elizabeth Warren did a really good job of letting the members of that meeting know, and the business people of Arizona know, that her mission was not to somehow suppress community banks," Hickman recalls.
But for some state banking chiefs, Warren's outreach has changed their mind about her but not about the CFPB itself. George Beattie, president and CEO of the Nebraska Bankers Association, told Mother Jones last fall that, in his view, Warren simply didn't understand community banks. Today, he's more positive about Warren, noting her "better appreciation for what banks in this country do for their communities." He worries more about having a single director run the CFPB, whether that's Warren or not. Beattie says he'd prefer a panel of directors run the bureau, like the Securities and Exchange Commission, though he ultimately thinks the bureau should be scrapped altogether. "The congress has created an exceedingly strong governmental agency with little oversight," he says. "I think that's a bad thing for this country regardless of who runs it."
House Republicans agree with Beattie. On Thursday, a House financial services subcommittee passed a trio of bills that would replace the single director with a bipartisan five-person commission, give a separate council of financial regulators veto power on new regulations by the bureau, and restrict the CFPB's power until the Senate confirms Obama's nominee to be director. So, too, do Senate Republicans. Earlier this week, they sent a letter to Obama saying they'd oppose any CFPB nominee until the bureau's power was scaled back.
To be sure, huge hurdles remain between Warren and the nomination. Republicans in Congress almost universally oppose her nomination. (She has, however, earned tepid praise in the past from Senate GOPers including Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Bob Corker of Tennessee.) At this point, Senate GOPers appear to willing to do anything to undermine the CFPB and prevent a strong consumer advocate like Warren from becoming its director, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to see how GOPers' demands will be met and a nominee confirmed before the July deadline. And of course on Wall Street, she has no shortage of enemies among the nation's largest banks.
But even if Warren only wins over some bankers and not others, leaving the industry conflicted on her nomination, that could actually be a victory. "There was universal opposition to Dodd-Frank," says a person who's worked closely with Warren in the past. "There was universal opposition to Warren getting the bureau started. At the end of the day, if the banking industry is fractured on her nomination, that's just fine."
03 February 2011
Elizabeth Warren 2.0 & THE CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU from BANKSTERUSA 3FEB11
ELIZABETH WARREN on the launch of the CFPB website, check it out! This is great news for all Americans...I have also added a link to the CFPB on this blog in the My Favorite Sites section.....
In a savvy move, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau launched its first website today. The CFPB was created by the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill in July 2010 and is headed on an interim basis by well-known consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren. While the agency will not officially open its doors for formal consumer complaints until July 2011, the new website offers the agency an opportunity to start reaching out to consumers to hear their ideas on how the new agency can best serve the public.
“We’re excited to announce the launch of our website, ConsumerFinance.gov, for one very important reason – to start a conversation with you. With the launch of our site, we will be Open for Suggestions,” Elizabeth Warren explained in a statement.
While the agency will have a hard time dealing with actual consumer complaints until it formally opens its doors, the website offers agency staff a mechanism for communicating with an anxious public -- who, in my experience, has been clamoring for Elizabeth Warren’s personal phone number ever since the passage of the Wall Street reform bill.
It is a clever idea and good customer relations.
“Like” the agency on Facebook.
Tweet your suggestion using the hashtag #CFPB. You can also follow the agency Twitter feed here.
“We’re excited to announce the launch of our website, ConsumerFinance.gov, for one very important reason – to start a conversation with you. With the launch of our site, we will be Open for Suggestions,” Elizabeth Warren explained in a statement.
While the agency will have a hard time dealing with actual consumer complaints until it formally opens its doors, the website offers agency staff a mechanism for communicating with an anxious public -- who, in my experience, has been clamoring for Elizabeth Warren’s personal phone number ever since the passage of the Wall Street reform bill.
It is a clever idea and good customer relations.
Get Involved in the Conversation!
Visit the website at ConsumerFinance.gov.“Like” the agency on Facebook.
Tweet your suggestion using the hashtag #CFPB. You can also follow the agency Twitter feed here.
01 January 2011
Vision: 8 Ways We're Making America a Better Place -- in Spite of the Disasters Coming out of Washington 1JAN11
MY first post for 2011 and I am glad it is one that offers hope. This from AlterNet
Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock form the Flatlanders, a powerhouse trio of Texas singer/ songwriters now based in Austin. But each of them was raised on the West Texas flatlands (hence the group's name) around Lubbock. They were shaped, both musically and personally, by the full 'Lubbock experience,' which includes a few cultural oddities. Several years ago, Butch explained one of these on a national radio talk show that Susan DeMarco and I hosted.
He pointed out that growing up in the straight-laced, God-fearing Protestant churches of that region could be very confusing for hormone-driven teenagers like him. "They told us that sex was the most vulgar, nastiest thing on earth," Butch said. "And that we should save it for someone we loved."
Politics is not sex, but these days it can be almost as confusing. Obama and the Democrats are in power, but they've been unwilling to assert it with any boldness on the big issues America faces. Instead, they keep capitulating to petulant, recalcitrant Republicans in the vain hope of engaging these pious, right-wing fundamentalists in some sort of bipartisan Kumbaya.
Meanwhile, the GOP's new wave of neo-Neanderthal leaders (Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, the Koch Brothers, Jim DeMint, the entire menagerie of Fox TV's nattering nabobs, et al.) have plunged the party of Lincoln (and of Reagan, for that matter) headlong into the abyss of political absurdity. EXAMPLE: Obama, they insist, is not merely the centrist, establishment liberal that he has proven to be, but an Islamo-socialist-fascist-marxist Kenyan, a spawn of Satan.
Seriously. Heed the babbling of Newt, who was always strange, but has now turned scary, having loosened all of the nuts and bolts on his sanity to free his inner lunatic. In September, the former leader of the House of Representatives of the United States of America embraced the nutty 'birthers' to declare that Obama exhibits "Kenyan anti-colonial behavior," and that the President's long-dead African father is channeling revolutionary thoughts through his son to rule America from beyond. Remember Newt is a guy who actually thinks he can be elected your president in 2012.
We live in strange times, do we not? Perhaps it's no cosmic coincidence that the balloting for November's congressional/gubernatorial elections began only 31 hours after Halloween.
But now it's the holidays, which raises the big question: is there anything political in 2010 for which we progressive/ populist Americans should be thankful?
Happily, yes! As I've rambled from town to town this year (crisscrossing from Chico to New York City, Cape May to Santa Fe, Pittsburgh to Princeton, Fort Worth to Fort Collins, Buffalo to San Francisco, Portland to Portland, the Wisconsin Dells to my old home place of Denison... and points beyond), I've found that while people are vastly disappointed by the meekness of the Democrats and totally dismayed by the willful weirdness of Republicans, neither has deterred them from pushing on with the groundwork that still must be done to revitalize our country's democracy.
However, rather than looking to Washington for the changes America needs, progressives are now uniting locally, focusing on direct actions they can take in their cities and states. As a young woman in Colorado Springs put it: "We voted for change, but we see that the money monsters in Washington eat change for breakfast. We don't have the power to fix that, not yet, but that doesn't mean we're powerless. We can make a difference where we live, gain more strength, and show the way. A national movement has to come from down here."
She's right. First of all, don't forget that it was the grassroots organizing, energy, and enthusiasm of progressives (especially young people) that created the Obama candidacy and presidency, so the activist base is far more solid and extensive than the corporate and political elite (forgive the redundancy there) want us to realize.
More importantly, local activism and success is intensifying as fast as faith in national politics is dissipating. The media mavens don't cover it (being far too busy touting the 11 percent of the public who say they identify with the corporate-backed teabag groups), but progressives are forging surprising coalitions, not only in San Francisco and New York City, but also in such places as Iowa, Houston, Syracuse, central Missouri, New Haven, Ohio, and Rhode Island. Here, outside the country's media centers, people are producing new solutions and structural changes that add up to real hope for a progressive America. On issues big and small, there's much we can be thankful for... and build on.
Wall Street
Rarely does the plutocracy reveal itself to the hoi polloi as crudely and flagrantly as it has done with Washington's ongoing bailout and shameless coddling of the Wall Street greedheads who wrecked our economy. While Republicans and Democrats alike have loudly decried the greed, they continue to reward the narcissistic barons and increase the power of the monopolistic financial giants.
Obama Democrats passed a meek reform bill that allows top bankers to keep grabbing obscene bonuses for continuing to run their banks as casinos, while letting the banks gain a tighter grip on our wallets and get away with no requirement to invest in productive enterprises, middle-class jobs, and housing. Worse than meek, Republicans are mendacious, having shamefully and openly tried to kill even the modest reforms offered by Democrats, in exchange for getting millions of dollars in campaign cash from Wall Streeters. Then comes the Tea Party, which initially rose from the public's red-faced outrage at banker greed, but got co-opted by GOP operatives. Far from going after Wall Street, the party has largely put its electioneering clout behind a host of congressional candidates taking banker money (often indirectly) and wailing about "big government" efforts to "punish" rich bankers.
Is there anyone who'll push honestly for justice and real change on Wall Street? Yes--the people themselves! Here are a few important grassroots efforts underway and gaining oomph:
1. National People's Action.
This is a growing network of more than two dozen community organizations across the country (workers, farmers, small business owners, retirees, students, clergy, homeowners, et al.) focused squarely on the unchecked greed of big banks. They have successfully confronted Federal Reserve honcho Ben Bernanke and bankers who secretively finance and profit from payday lenders (who charge 400 percent interest for 30-day loans). Deploying more than 200 organizers, their Showdown In America.org campaign seeks to break up the too-big-to-fail banks, decentralize Wall Street power into small and medium-sized banks, impose a moratorium on home foreclosures, and recover some $140 billion of bonus money being siphoned off this year by banker elites.
2. Financial Speculation Tax.
Having poured trillions of the public's dollars into the rescue of Wall Street, the Republicans, 'Blue Dog' Democrats, and Tea Party leaders insist that there is no money left for the bold job creation initiatives (such as a nationwide program for green jobs and for repairing and extending our country's essential infrastructure) that America and the middle class desperately need. Disingenuously, they ask: where would you get the money?
Easy. Get it from where it went--the pockets of Wall Street's high-rolling, casino-style speculators. They do nothing but game the system for their own fast-buck profits, dumping trillions into rapid-fire computer trades involving such nonsensical, unproductive schemes as credit default swaps. Put even a tiny tax on these gaming transactions (ranging from 0.02 to 0.25 percent), and America could recoup over $100 billion a year for job creation and deficit reduction.
After all, we tax Las Vegas' casinos, why not Wall Street's? This is nothing new--for 50 years, up until 1966, the US had a transaction tax in place, and it was doubled in 1932 to help recovery efforts in the Great Depression. Also, England has a very successful one working for it today.
Such groups as the AFL-CIO and SEIU are mounting a major organizing campaign behind the FST. Called 'Make Wall Street Pay,' the effort already has congressional backing, and is gaining strength. As usual, the media isn't covering this, but a growing number of activist groups are joining the call for this policy of common sense fairness. For more information and action suggestions, check out the 'Action Center' at www.banksterusa.org.
3. Elizabeth Warren.
Grassroots clout has already produced one bright spot in Washington's dim response to Wall Street greed. The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection survived a ferocious onslaught of banker lobbying to be included in the otherwise lukewarm reform bill.
This idea came from a levelheaded, plainspoken, populist-minded bankruptcy expert, Elizabeth Warren. A Harvard professor of law, Warren also is a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks, having seen her own hardscrabble Oklahoma family endure bankruptcy. "I learned early on what debt means, how vulnerable it makes people."
By rallying outsider progressive forces to the cause, Warren became a major inside player, pushing relentlessly to get this important consumer position included in the final law. Having the position is nice, but who would fill it? Bankers wanted one of their own, but consumer and community groups had sprung into action even before the bill passed, organizing tens of thousands of regular folks to demand that Obama name Warren herself to head the agency. Despite furious pressure from bank lobbyists, the people were clear: the President had to give us this one. Warren accepted, but--showing the savvy she'll need to be effective--she agreed to be named special adviser to the President in charge of overseeing the new agency. This avoided the long, brutal, and iffy confirmation fight that the financial giants would've mounted to kill an outright nomination. As a result, she'll probably have a shorter tenure, but she starts right away, allowing her (and us) to fend off the lobbyists and give the fledgling bureau a strong, consumer-oriented beginning.
4. Move Your Money.
For your own private rebellion against the financial finaglers and manipulators, withdraw your money from them--and tell them why you're doing it. Viable options for stashing and investing your funds abound, including credit unions, community banks, and socially responsible credit card and investment firms. MoveYourMoney.info is a spreading movement that literally helps you move, allowing you to escape the tainted tentacles of Wall Street. In addition to your personal funds, look into shifting the accounts of your business, union, church, co-op, neighborhood association, and other organizations into financial institutions closer to home... and much closer to your values. After all, it's your money --why let the bastards have it? Talk it up with friends and family, write letters to the editor, send emails, post blogs, and find other ways to expand the movement.
5. Dog Poop.
It's worth recalling that even the smallest dog can lift its leg on the tallest building. Indeed, when trying to change the world, even small steps can make a big difference, so turn your creative impulses loose.
Take the 'Park Spark,' built by Matthew Mazzotta, an artist in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At his local dog park, he thought about all that canine excrement being bagged and tossed into trashcans. A bulb lit in Mazzotta's head: why not convert the waste into poop power?
He put two 500-gallon oil tanks, painted a cheery yellow, in the park where people can deposit their pooch's poop. Microbes in one tank digest the waste and send methane gas into the second tank, which fuels a gaslight lantern to illuminate the park. Mazzotta's functional sculpture tidies up, provides free renewable energy, and helps us think differently about what's in front of us, including seeing waste as a resource.
6. De-Paving.
Another small step with a big progressive payoff is being taken in such cities as Boston, Davenport, Houston, Portland, and Seattle. People in these places have come together to address the seemingly pedestrian matter of pavement (this is but one of many freewheeling ideas for local activism spun from the fertile mind of enviro-maestro Bill McKibben, who has prompted thousands of local folks to form 'work parties' that come up with hands-on solutions for their communities--check it out at www.350.org). In this case, the problem is that cities simply have too much of their land locked under pavement, which causes flooding, toxic runoff, heat, and an inhuman disconnect from nature. Thus, the rise of a de-paving movement.
Somerville, Massachusetts, for example, has 77 percent of its land coated in asphalt, concrete, and other impervious slabs. So teams are volunteering to free the land, bit by bit, reclaiming green spaces in yards, school grounds, traffic medians, etc... It's hard, hard work, and it's slow, but the payoff is tangible as gardens, parks, and life emerge. A similar group in Oregon has put up a website (Depave.org) that offers planning tips, a list of tools, and step-by-step instructions for others who want to uncover the joy of the green earth. As one de-paver says, "There's some-thing really empowering about literally taking things into your own hands and restoring your community."
Buying Our Democracy
This will sound loopy, but I think we must also be grateful to the Koch brothers this year. Yes, the billionaire, laissez-faire extremists whom we outed in the February Lowdown, detailing dozens of front groups (including the Tea Party) that Charles and David funded and orchestrated in a secretive, long-term effort to impose corporate rule over our nation.
We owe them a huge "thank you," because their political excesses and ideological overreach have finally shredded the cloak of secrecy around these front groups. Now, even such establishment media outlets as The New Yorker are covering the Kochs (see Jane Mayer's extensive, well-written story in the August 30 issue). The brothers are turning into the bobblehead dolls of the emerging plutocracy. Thanks to these free-spending zealots, the public is beginning to see that there really is a vast right-wing conspiracy to undermine public supremacy over corporate power.
The Federalist Society, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, and Mercatus Center are just a few of the brothers' creations that for years have tried to remake the judiciary into a governmental monkey wrench to undo our people's democratic authority. In January, this perfidious effort culminated in the constitutional coup that five Supreme Court corporatists pulled off with their decree in the hoked-up 'Citizens United' case (Lowdown, March 2010). As you'd expect, congressional Republicans applauded the coup, and, while Obama and the Democrats have merely complained about this raw power grab, they've essentially accepted it as a done deal. That would be that--except for one thing: you. Ordinary people, who usually pay little attention to arcane court decisions, grasped the import of this one from the moment it was issued, and 80 percent oppose it (including 76 percent of Republicans). This has fueled two important, though little reported, uprisings across the country:
7. Amend the Constitution.
Amending is not easy to do, though it's hardly impossible (twelve amendments were added in the past century), and it is the definitive way to halt the Court's enthronement of corporate money. Also, the very attempt to amend can be a big positive, for the process educates and enlists people in a historic democratic cause that is worthy of them.
Several pro-amendment coalitions have come together to work on this important issue. FreeSpeechForPeople.org includes Public Citizen, Voter Action, the Center for Corporate Policy, and the American Independent Business Alliance. The MovetoAmend.org coalition includes such groups as the Program on Corporations and Law in Democracy (POCLAD), the Alliance for Democracy, Family Farm Defenders, Reclaim Democracy, the National Lawyers Guild, the Center for Media and Democracy, and the Liberty Tree Foundation. The coalitions press for a broader approach that would eliminate the fiction of 'corporate personhood,' explicitly stating that only humans are persons with constitutional rights. MoveOn.org, Common Cause, People for the American Way, and other groups are also working on this issue.
8. Clean Elections.
Long overdue, this would bring the public financing alternative (which a growing number of states and cities have successfully implemented) to all Congressional elections. Maine, North Carolina, Arizona, and New Mexico are among the pioneers of this system, which disarms the corrupt, pay-to-play lobbyists by giving candidates the ability to forego the corporate campaign funds that influence peddlers dole out in exchange for legislative favors. This is a game-changing, structural reform that works, which is why it's getting vehement opposition from Republicans and only lip service from the Obamacans.
Despite this, the idea is on the move. Thanks to a grassroots coalition organized through FixCongressFirst.org and to a national network of clean election experts and organizers called PublicCampaign.org, the Fair Elections Now Act is moving through Congress. It has over 25 co-sponsors in the Senate and 160 co-sponsors in the House. The bill made it out of a House committee last month.
Shine Where You Are
The message here is simple: we can have the kind of economy, government, environment, and country we want... IF we keep pushing, organizing, building, and otherwise doing the work of democracy. Producing change we really can believe in is up to us--not to Obama or the Democratic Party. They are not the progressive movement, we are.
It's never easy to confront the corporate order, to challenge the moneyed powers. As Henrik Ibsen instructed us long ago: "Never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth."
But fight we must, for freedom, truth, justice, and democracy don't just happen. We The People have to produce them. The good news is that even when the national political scene momentarily darkens, we can be thankful for the thousands of candles, torches, and other lights beaming with such promise all across the country, lit by people like you. In fact, you're probably already one of those hopeful beams, so we're thankful for you, too. If not, become one, and join with others to keep America's grassroots shining bright.
We can have the kind of economy, government, environment, and country we want, if we keep pushing, organizing, building, and otherwise doing the work of democracy.
He pointed out that growing up in the straight-laced, God-fearing Protestant churches of that region could be very confusing for hormone-driven teenagers like him. "They told us that sex was the most vulgar, nastiest thing on earth," Butch said. "And that we should save it for someone we loved."
Politics is not sex, but these days it can be almost as confusing. Obama and the Democrats are in power, but they've been unwilling to assert it with any boldness on the big issues America faces. Instead, they keep capitulating to petulant, recalcitrant Republicans in the vain hope of engaging these pious, right-wing fundamentalists in some sort of bipartisan Kumbaya.
Meanwhile, the GOP's new wave of neo-Neanderthal leaders (Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, the Koch Brothers, Jim DeMint, the entire menagerie of Fox TV's nattering nabobs, et al.) have plunged the party of Lincoln (and of Reagan, for that matter) headlong into the abyss of political absurdity. EXAMPLE: Obama, they insist, is not merely the centrist, establishment liberal that he has proven to be, but an Islamo-socialist-fascist-marxist Kenyan, a spawn of Satan.
Seriously. Heed the babbling of Newt, who was always strange, but has now turned scary, having loosened all of the nuts and bolts on his sanity to free his inner lunatic. In September, the former leader of the House of Representatives of the United States of America embraced the nutty 'birthers' to declare that Obama exhibits "Kenyan anti-colonial behavior," and that the President's long-dead African father is channeling revolutionary thoughts through his son to rule America from beyond. Remember Newt is a guy who actually thinks he can be elected your president in 2012.
We live in strange times, do we not? Perhaps it's no cosmic coincidence that the balloting for November's congressional/gubernatorial elections began only 31 hours after Halloween.
But now it's the holidays, which raises the big question: is there anything political in 2010 for which we progressive/ populist Americans should be thankful?
Happily, yes! As I've rambled from town to town this year (crisscrossing from Chico to New York City, Cape May to Santa Fe, Pittsburgh to Princeton, Fort Worth to Fort Collins, Buffalo to San Francisco, Portland to Portland, the Wisconsin Dells to my old home place of Denison... and points beyond), I've found that while people are vastly disappointed by the meekness of the Democrats and totally dismayed by the willful weirdness of Republicans, neither has deterred them from pushing on with the groundwork that still must be done to revitalize our country's democracy.
However, rather than looking to Washington for the changes America needs, progressives are now uniting locally, focusing on direct actions they can take in their cities and states. As a young woman in Colorado Springs put it: "We voted for change, but we see that the money monsters in Washington eat change for breakfast. We don't have the power to fix that, not yet, but that doesn't mean we're powerless. We can make a difference where we live, gain more strength, and show the way. A national movement has to come from down here."
She's right. First of all, don't forget that it was the grassroots organizing, energy, and enthusiasm of progressives (especially young people) that created the Obama candidacy and presidency, so the activist base is far more solid and extensive than the corporate and political elite (forgive the redundancy there) want us to realize.
More importantly, local activism and success is intensifying as fast as faith in national politics is dissipating. The media mavens don't cover it (being far too busy touting the 11 percent of the public who say they identify with the corporate-backed teabag groups), but progressives are forging surprising coalitions, not only in San Francisco and New York City, but also in such places as Iowa, Houston, Syracuse, central Missouri, New Haven, Ohio, and Rhode Island. Here, outside the country's media centers, people are producing new solutions and structural changes that add up to real hope for a progressive America. On issues big and small, there's much we can be thankful for... and build on.
Wall Street
Rarely does the plutocracy reveal itself to the hoi polloi as crudely and flagrantly as it has done with Washington's ongoing bailout and shameless coddling of the Wall Street greedheads who wrecked our economy. While Republicans and Democrats alike have loudly decried the greed, they continue to reward the narcissistic barons and increase the power of the monopolistic financial giants.
Obama Democrats passed a meek reform bill that allows top bankers to keep grabbing obscene bonuses for continuing to run their banks as casinos, while letting the banks gain a tighter grip on our wallets and get away with no requirement to invest in productive enterprises, middle-class jobs, and housing. Worse than meek, Republicans are mendacious, having shamefully and openly tried to kill even the modest reforms offered by Democrats, in exchange for getting millions of dollars in campaign cash from Wall Streeters. Then comes the Tea Party, which initially rose from the public's red-faced outrage at banker greed, but got co-opted by GOP operatives. Far from going after Wall Street, the party has largely put its electioneering clout behind a host of congressional candidates taking banker money (often indirectly) and wailing about "big government" efforts to "punish" rich bankers.
Is there anyone who'll push honestly for justice and real change on Wall Street? Yes--the people themselves! Here are a few important grassroots efforts underway and gaining oomph:
1. National People's Action.
This is a growing network of more than two dozen community organizations across the country (workers, farmers, small business owners, retirees, students, clergy, homeowners, et al.) focused squarely on the unchecked greed of big banks. They have successfully confronted Federal Reserve honcho Ben Bernanke and bankers who secretively finance and profit from payday lenders (who charge 400 percent interest for 30-day loans). Deploying more than 200 organizers, their Showdown In America.org campaign seeks to break up the too-big-to-fail banks, decentralize Wall Street power into small and medium-sized banks, impose a moratorium on home foreclosures, and recover some $140 billion of bonus money being siphoned off this year by banker elites.
2. Financial Speculation Tax.
Having poured trillions of the public's dollars into the rescue of Wall Street, the Republicans, 'Blue Dog' Democrats, and Tea Party leaders insist that there is no money left for the bold job creation initiatives (such as a nationwide program for green jobs and for repairing and extending our country's essential infrastructure) that America and the middle class desperately need. Disingenuously, they ask: where would you get the money?
Easy. Get it from where it went--the pockets of Wall Street's high-rolling, casino-style speculators. They do nothing but game the system for their own fast-buck profits, dumping trillions into rapid-fire computer trades involving such nonsensical, unproductive schemes as credit default swaps. Put even a tiny tax on these gaming transactions (ranging from 0.02 to 0.25 percent), and America could recoup over $100 billion a year for job creation and deficit reduction.
After all, we tax Las Vegas' casinos, why not Wall Street's? This is nothing new--for 50 years, up until 1966, the US had a transaction tax in place, and it was doubled in 1932 to help recovery efforts in the Great Depression. Also, England has a very successful one working for it today.
Such groups as the AFL-CIO and SEIU are mounting a major organizing campaign behind the FST. Called 'Make Wall Street Pay,' the effort already has congressional backing, and is gaining strength. As usual, the media isn't covering this, but a growing number of activist groups are joining the call for this policy of common sense fairness. For more information and action suggestions, check out the 'Action Center' at www.banksterusa.org.
3. Elizabeth Warren.
Grassroots clout has already produced one bright spot in Washington's dim response to Wall Street greed. The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection survived a ferocious onslaught of banker lobbying to be included in the otherwise lukewarm reform bill.
This idea came from a levelheaded, plainspoken, populist-minded bankruptcy expert, Elizabeth Warren. A Harvard professor of law, Warren also is a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks, having seen her own hardscrabble Oklahoma family endure bankruptcy. "I learned early on what debt means, how vulnerable it makes people."
By rallying outsider progressive forces to the cause, Warren became a major inside player, pushing relentlessly to get this important consumer position included in the final law. Having the position is nice, but who would fill it? Bankers wanted one of their own, but consumer and community groups had sprung into action even before the bill passed, organizing tens of thousands of regular folks to demand that Obama name Warren herself to head the agency. Despite furious pressure from bank lobbyists, the people were clear: the President had to give us this one. Warren accepted, but--showing the savvy she'll need to be effective--she agreed to be named special adviser to the President in charge of overseeing the new agency. This avoided the long, brutal, and iffy confirmation fight that the financial giants would've mounted to kill an outright nomination. As a result, she'll probably have a shorter tenure, but she starts right away, allowing her (and us) to fend off the lobbyists and give the fledgling bureau a strong, consumer-oriented beginning.
4. Move Your Money.
For your own private rebellion against the financial finaglers and manipulators, withdraw your money from them--and tell them why you're doing it. Viable options for stashing and investing your funds abound, including credit unions, community banks, and socially responsible credit card and investment firms. MoveYourMoney.info is a spreading movement that literally helps you move, allowing you to escape the tainted tentacles of Wall Street. In addition to your personal funds, look into shifting the accounts of your business, union, church, co-op, neighborhood association, and other organizations into financial institutions closer to home... and much closer to your values. After all, it's your money --why let the bastards have it? Talk it up with friends and family, write letters to the editor, send emails, post blogs, and find other ways to expand the movement.
5. Dog Poop.
It's worth recalling that even the smallest dog can lift its leg on the tallest building. Indeed, when trying to change the world, even small steps can make a big difference, so turn your creative impulses loose.
Take the 'Park Spark,' built by Matthew Mazzotta, an artist in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At his local dog park, he thought about all that canine excrement being bagged and tossed into trashcans. A bulb lit in Mazzotta's head: why not convert the waste into poop power?
He put two 500-gallon oil tanks, painted a cheery yellow, in the park where people can deposit their pooch's poop. Microbes in one tank digest the waste and send methane gas into the second tank, which fuels a gaslight lantern to illuminate the park. Mazzotta's functional sculpture tidies up, provides free renewable energy, and helps us think differently about what's in front of us, including seeing waste as a resource.
6. De-Paving.
Another small step with a big progressive payoff is being taken in such cities as Boston, Davenport, Houston, Portland, and Seattle. People in these places have come together to address the seemingly pedestrian matter of pavement (this is but one of many freewheeling ideas for local activism spun from the fertile mind of enviro-maestro Bill McKibben, who has prompted thousands of local folks to form 'work parties' that come up with hands-on solutions for their communities--check it out at www.350.org). In this case, the problem is that cities simply have too much of their land locked under pavement, which causes flooding, toxic runoff, heat, and an inhuman disconnect from nature. Thus, the rise of a de-paving movement.
Somerville, Massachusetts, for example, has 77 percent of its land coated in asphalt, concrete, and other impervious slabs. So teams are volunteering to free the land, bit by bit, reclaiming green spaces in yards, school grounds, traffic medians, etc... It's hard, hard work, and it's slow, but the payoff is tangible as gardens, parks, and life emerge. A similar group in Oregon has put up a website (Depave.org) that offers planning tips, a list of tools, and step-by-step instructions for others who want to uncover the joy of the green earth. As one de-paver says, "There's some-thing really empowering about literally taking things into your own hands and restoring your community."
Buying Our Democracy
This will sound loopy, but I think we must also be grateful to the Koch brothers this year. Yes, the billionaire, laissez-faire extremists whom we outed in the February Lowdown, detailing dozens of front groups (including the Tea Party) that Charles and David funded and orchestrated in a secretive, long-term effort to impose corporate rule over our nation.
We owe them a huge "thank you," because their political excesses and ideological overreach have finally shredded the cloak of secrecy around these front groups. Now, even such establishment media outlets as The New Yorker are covering the Kochs (see Jane Mayer's extensive, well-written story in the August 30 issue). The brothers are turning into the bobblehead dolls of the emerging plutocracy. Thanks to these free-spending zealots, the public is beginning to see that there really is a vast right-wing conspiracy to undermine public supremacy over corporate power.
The Federalist Society, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, and Mercatus Center are just a few of the brothers' creations that for years have tried to remake the judiciary into a governmental monkey wrench to undo our people's democratic authority. In January, this perfidious effort culminated in the constitutional coup that five Supreme Court corporatists pulled off with their decree in the hoked-up 'Citizens United' case (Lowdown, March 2010). As you'd expect, congressional Republicans applauded the coup, and, while Obama and the Democrats have merely complained about this raw power grab, they've essentially accepted it as a done deal. That would be that--except for one thing: you. Ordinary people, who usually pay little attention to arcane court decisions, grasped the import of this one from the moment it was issued, and 80 percent oppose it (including 76 percent of Republicans). This has fueled two important, though little reported, uprisings across the country:
7. Amend the Constitution.
Amending is not easy to do, though it's hardly impossible (twelve amendments were added in the past century), and it is the definitive way to halt the Court's enthronement of corporate money. Also, the very attempt to amend can be a big positive, for the process educates and enlists people in a historic democratic cause that is worthy of them.
Several pro-amendment coalitions have come together to work on this important issue. FreeSpeechForPeople.org includes Public Citizen, Voter Action, the Center for Corporate Policy, and the American Independent Business Alliance. The MovetoAmend.org coalition includes such groups as the Program on Corporations and Law in Democracy (POCLAD), the Alliance for Democracy, Family Farm Defenders, Reclaim Democracy, the National Lawyers Guild, the Center for Media and Democracy, and the Liberty Tree Foundation. The coalitions press for a broader approach that would eliminate the fiction of 'corporate personhood,' explicitly stating that only humans are persons with constitutional rights. MoveOn.org, Common Cause, People for the American Way, and other groups are also working on this issue.
8. Clean Elections.
Long overdue, this would bring the public financing alternative (which a growing number of states and cities have successfully implemented) to all Congressional elections. Maine, North Carolina, Arizona, and New Mexico are among the pioneers of this system, which disarms the corrupt, pay-to-play lobbyists by giving candidates the ability to forego the corporate campaign funds that influence peddlers dole out in exchange for legislative favors. This is a game-changing, structural reform that works, which is why it's getting vehement opposition from Republicans and only lip service from the Obamacans.
Despite this, the idea is on the move. Thanks to a grassroots coalition organized through FixCongressFirst.org and to a national network of clean election experts and organizers called PublicCampaign.org, the Fair Elections Now Act is moving through Congress. It has over 25 co-sponsors in the Senate and 160 co-sponsors in the House. The bill made it out of a House committee last month.
Shine Where You Are
The message here is simple: we can have the kind of economy, government, environment, and country we want... IF we keep pushing, organizing, building, and otherwise doing the work of democracy. Producing change we really can believe in is up to us--not to Obama or the Democratic Party. They are not the progressive movement, we are.
It's never easy to confront the corporate order, to challenge the moneyed powers. As Henrik Ibsen instructed us long ago: "Never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth."
But fight we must, for freedom, truth, justice, and democracy don't just happen. We The People have to produce them. The good news is that even when the national political scene momentarily darkens, we can be thankful for the thousands of candles, torches, and other lights beaming with such promise all across the country, lit by people like you. In fact, you're probably already one of those hopeful beams, so we're thankful for you, too. If not, become one, and join with others to keep America's grassroots shining bright.
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.
30 December 2010
Elizabeth Warren Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau New Consumer Agency Is Frightfully Necessary -- And Late 29DEZ10
IF there is one person in the government that has earned the total trust of average Americans it is Elizabeth Warren......and her is what she has to say on the latest foreclosure news and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau....
No one has missed the headlines: Haphazard and possibly illegal practices at mortgage-servicing companies have called into question home foreclosures across the nation.
The latest disclosures are deeply troubling, but they should not come as a big surprise. For years, both individual homeowners and consumer advocates sounded alarms that foreclosure processes were riddled with problems.
While federal and state investigators are still examining exactly what has gone wrong and why, two things are clear.
First, several financial services companies have already admitted that they used "robo-signers," false declarations, and other workarounds to cut corners, creating a legal nightmare that will waste time and money that could have been better spent to help this economy recover. Mortgage lenders will spend millions of dollars retracing their steps, often with the same result that families who cannot pay will lose their homes.
Second, this mess might well have been avoided if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had been in place just a few years ago.
The new consumer agency is one of the signature accomplishments of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law by President Obama this summer.
The new agency will take on oversight responsibilities that had been scattered among several federal agencies, and it will be a new cop on the beat that will end big loopholes in the regulatory system.
For the first time, banks and non-bank lenders (such as payday lenders, check cashers and mortgage brokers) will be subject to the same federal oversight to ensure that they are all playing by the same rules-no more turning sideways and slipping through the regulatory cracks.
Lost in much of the back-and-forth over wrongful foreclosures is the question of whether the scandal could have been prevented. The answer is yes.
The practices now under investigation took root and grew because there was no single federal regulator with both the responsibility and the tools to look out for consumers.
Had it existed, the new consumer agency could have stopped these problems before they multiplied. Many of the failures already admitted were not sophisticated scams that had been carefully concealed. By enforcing existing laws and involving state authorities early on, the agency could have made sure that the law was respected. No one would need to wonder whether the world of borrowing and lending works only one way: Families have to follow the legal rules, but the rules are optional for big banks.
Once it is fully operational, the new consumer agency will have supervisory authority over all large mortgage servicers. It will be able to examine them on a regular basis to make sure they follow the rules. If those servicers decide it is cheaper or faster to circumvent federal law, the consumer agency will have the tools to hold them accountable.
No one will be allowed to break the rules without triggering a strong and prompt federal response.
Currently, the federal interagency foreclosure task force, including the members of the Financial Services Oversight Council, is working along with the state Attorneys General to get to the bottom of these problems. The implementation team for the new consumer agency is also working to assemble and coordinate teams to deal with servicing and other issues.
These efforts are critical, but there is more work to do: We must ensure this kind of scandal-or some close cousin-does not happen again.
A mortgage is the biggest financial commitment most Americans will make in a lifetime, and the toll on Florida has been especially heavy and the need for oversight particularly apparent. A few weeks ago, I watched proceedings in a Fort Lauderdale foreclosure court and saw firsthand the painful outcomes for numerous families.
Unfair servicing practices can worsen a family's already difficult economic situation, and the injury echoes from the family to the community and ultimately throughout the economy. Cops on the beat can stop problems before the damage spreads. If there ever was any doubt that the new consumer agency is necessary, the latest foreclosure developments should put that to rest.
No one has missed the headlines: Haphazard and possibly illegal practices at mortgage-servicing companies have called into question home foreclosures across the nation.
The latest disclosures are deeply troubling, but they should not come as a big surprise. For years, both individual homeowners and consumer advocates sounded alarms that foreclosure processes were riddled with problems.
While federal and state investigators are still examining exactly what has gone wrong and why, two things are clear.
First, several financial services companies have already admitted that they used "robo-signers," false declarations, and other workarounds to cut corners, creating a legal nightmare that will waste time and money that could have been better spent to help this economy recover. Mortgage lenders will spend millions of dollars retracing their steps, often with the same result that families who cannot pay will lose their homes.
Second, this mess might well have been avoided if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had been in place just a few years ago.
The new consumer agency is one of the signature accomplishments of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law by President Obama this summer.
The new agency will take on oversight responsibilities that had been scattered among several federal agencies, and it will be a new cop on the beat that will end big loopholes in the regulatory system.
For the first time, banks and non-bank lenders (such as payday lenders, check cashers and mortgage brokers) will be subject to the same federal oversight to ensure that they are all playing by the same rules-no more turning sideways and slipping through the regulatory cracks.
Lost in much of the back-and-forth over wrongful foreclosures is the question of whether the scandal could have been prevented. The answer is yes.
The practices now under investigation took root and grew because there was no single federal regulator with both the responsibility and the tools to look out for consumers.
Had it existed, the new consumer agency could have stopped these problems before they multiplied. Many of the failures already admitted were not sophisticated scams that had been carefully concealed. By enforcing existing laws and involving state authorities early on, the agency could have made sure that the law was respected. No one would need to wonder whether the world of borrowing and lending works only one way: Families have to follow the legal rules, but the rules are optional for big banks.
Once it is fully operational, the new consumer agency will have supervisory authority over all large mortgage servicers. It will be able to examine them on a regular basis to make sure they follow the rules. If those servicers decide it is cheaper or faster to circumvent federal law, the consumer agency will have the tools to hold them accountable.
No one will be allowed to break the rules without triggering a strong and prompt federal response.
Currently, the federal interagency foreclosure task force, including the members of the Financial Services Oversight Council, is working along with the state Attorneys General to get to the bottom of these problems. The implementation team for the new consumer agency is also working to assemble and coordinate teams to deal with servicing and other issues.
These efforts are critical, but there is more work to do: We must ensure this kind of scandal-or some close cousin-does not happen again.
A mortgage is the biggest financial commitment most Americans will make in a lifetime, and the toll on Florida has been especially heavy and the need for oversight particularly apparent. A few weeks ago, I watched proceedings in a Fort Lauderdale foreclosure court and saw firsthand the painful outcomes for numerous families.
Unfair servicing practices can worsen a family's already difficult economic situation, and the injury echoes from the family to the community and ultimately throughout the economy. Cops on the beat can stop problems before the damage spreads. If there ever was any doubt that the new consumer agency is necessary, the latest foreclosure developments should put that to rest.
16 December 2010
Social Security: The Coming Cave-in 12DEZ10
If you think the Democratic base is mad at Obama now for making a craven deal with Republicans that continues tax breaks for the richest Americans and adds new ones for their heirs through a big cut in the estate tax, just wait a few weeks until Obama caves on Social Security.
How will this occur? The deficit commission appointed by the President has called for an increase in the retirement age, as well as other cuts in benefits over time. And the deal that Obama made with the Republicans just gave deficit hawks new ammunition by increasing the projected deficit by nearly $900 billion over a decade. Social Security will be in the cross-hairs.
The deficit commission has tried to camouflage these cuts by emphasizing that Social Security benefits for the very poor would not be reduced, and might even be increased. But in the commission's proposal, the cuts would affect middle-class retirees. Larry Summers, who is stepping down as Obama's economic chief, has refused to rule out cuts.
Social Security has also been softened up by the element of the tax deal that temporarily cuts payroll taxes. Supposedly, the trust funds will be made whole by a transfer from general government funds. But this increases the deficit.
So Obama has created a kind of pincer attack on Social Security. One arm is the deficit commission, which has created the blueprint. The other is the tax-cut deal, which increases the deficit, adding to the artificial hysteria that Social Security is going broke. Meanwhile, the right is playing a very cute game, congratulating Obama for the deal. According to columnist Charles Krauthammer, writing in Friday's Washington Post, "Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010." Really? How did he do that? It sure looked like he got rolled. "The President negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history, larger than the 814 $billion 2009 stimulus package."
The New York Times' resident right-wing pundit, David Brooks, also writing Friday, was peddling the same line:
"The fact is, Obama and the Democrats have had an excellent week," Brooks wrote. "The White House negotiators did an outstanding job for their side."
When the right congratulates Obama for winning, you know he is losing. For starters, the proposed compromise isn't much of an economic stimulus. If the deal passes Congress, taxpayers will be paying the same income tax rates in 2011 and 2012 as in 2010. No stimulus there.
The only real stimulus is the temporary cut in Social Security taxes, the extension of unemployment insurance plus a few minor tax breaks for regular people, totaling about $200 billion. That's a little more than one percent of a $15 trillion economy. Pretty puny, certainly a lot smaller than the inadequate stimulus of February 2009 when the recession was only beginning to deepen.
Except for the extension of unemployment insurance, which should be done out of common decency, most of the "stimulus" is pure Republican ideology -- stimulate the economy by cutting taxes. If that had worked, the huge tax cuts of the Bush years would have kept the economy out of recession.
There is not a nickel of public investment or direct job creation in this proposed deal. And it is well recognized by economists that in a recession, temporary tax cuts, especially tax cuts tilted to the rich, provide far less bang for the buck than public investment.
If Obama had fought for a deal that restored Clinton-era tax rates on the richest two percent of the population, and used the revenue for direct investment and job creation, that would have been a stimulus worth celebrating. And doubtless, commentators like Krauthammer and Brooks would be condemning it.
Because the Congressional Budget Office assumed that all the Bush tax cuts would expire on December 31, 2010, the tax-cut deal creates a new budgetary reality. Suddenly, the ten-year deficit will be almost $900 billion larger than projected.
This, in turn, will give new ammunition to the deficit hawks. And here is where Obama has set up Social Security to take the hit, unless he drastically shifts ground.
The supposed crisis of Social Security is a phony. Social Security is financed by payroll taxes. Reduce unemployment, increase wages, and the crisis disappears. Even with only modestly better unemployment rates and wage growth, the modest projected shortfall could be eliminated by eliminating the cap on income subject to tax.
A Democratic president with strong progressive principles and political nerve would have taken his party into the mid-term election pledging never to cut Social Security and daring Republicans to take a similar pledge. Instead, Obama appointed a deficit commission with a majority of appointees wanting to cut the Democrats' signature program -- thus blurring party differences on the Democrats' biggest political winner.
Obama also signaled Democrats in Congress that he might well include Social Security cuts as part of a grand deficit-reduction deal. If that occurs, the civil war in the Democratic Party will only deepen.
Coda: The other day, I was part of a conversation in which the question came up: If Democrats in Congress do hold their noses and vote for the tax-cut deal in order to prevent unemployment benefits from being cut off on Christmas, what might they ask of Obama in return? There is not a great deal that he can deliver legislatively, unless he decides to get serious about wielding his veto pen.
The best idea to emerge was this: Democrats should demand, in return for their aye votes, that Obama appoint Elizabeth Warren to chair the National Economic Council, to succeed the departing Larry Summers. Warren is the one senior administration official who has not stopped fighting to protect regular Americans. She is not a Ph.D economist, but neither was the man for whom the Council was created, its first head, Robert Rubin. Nor was Rubin's successor, Gene Sperling.
According to press reports, the man about to get the job is Roger Altman, an investment banker and former deputy to Rubin. Altman has been to the White House at least three times in recent weeks, and his appointment seems all teed up. Altman would continue the Wall Street dynasty around Obama -- the very gang whose reckless deregulation and speculation brought us the economic collapse whose damage is now being used to justify wrecking Social Security.
Getting Warren instead of Altman would almost justify voting for this stinker of a tax deal. Maybe Warren could even get Obama to think twice about the political and economic wisdom of throwing Social Security on the pyre of deficit reduction.
How will this occur? The deficit commission appointed by the President has called for an increase in the retirement age, as well as other cuts in benefits over time. And the deal that Obama made with the Republicans just gave deficit hawks new ammunition by increasing the projected deficit by nearly $900 billion over a decade. Social Security will be in the cross-hairs.
The deficit commission has tried to camouflage these cuts by emphasizing that Social Security benefits for the very poor would not be reduced, and might even be increased. But in the commission's proposal, the cuts would affect middle-class retirees. Larry Summers, who is stepping down as Obama's economic chief, has refused to rule out cuts.
Social Security has also been softened up by the element of the tax deal that temporarily cuts payroll taxes. Supposedly, the trust funds will be made whole by a transfer from general government funds. But this increases the deficit.
So Obama has created a kind of pincer attack on Social Security. One arm is the deficit commission, which has created the blueprint. The other is the tax-cut deal, which increases the deficit, adding to the artificial hysteria that Social Security is going broke. Meanwhile, the right is playing a very cute game, congratulating Obama for the deal. According to columnist Charles Krauthammer, writing in Friday's Washington Post, "Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010." Really? How did he do that? It sure looked like he got rolled. "The President negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history, larger than the 814 $billion 2009 stimulus package."
The New York Times' resident right-wing pundit, David Brooks, also writing Friday, was peddling the same line:
"The fact is, Obama and the Democrats have had an excellent week," Brooks wrote. "The White House negotiators did an outstanding job for their side."
When the right congratulates Obama for winning, you know he is losing. For starters, the proposed compromise isn't much of an economic stimulus. If the deal passes Congress, taxpayers will be paying the same income tax rates in 2011 and 2012 as in 2010. No stimulus there.
The only real stimulus is the temporary cut in Social Security taxes, the extension of unemployment insurance plus a few minor tax breaks for regular people, totaling about $200 billion. That's a little more than one percent of a $15 trillion economy. Pretty puny, certainly a lot smaller than the inadequate stimulus of February 2009 when the recession was only beginning to deepen.
Except for the extension of unemployment insurance, which should be done out of common decency, most of the "stimulus" is pure Republican ideology -- stimulate the economy by cutting taxes. If that had worked, the huge tax cuts of the Bush years would have kept the economy out of recession.
There is not a nickel of public investment or direct job creation in this proposed deal. And it is well recognized by economists that in a recession, temporary tax cuts, especially tax cuts tilted to the rich, provide far less bang for the buck than public investment.
If Obama had fought for a deal that restored Clinton-era tax rates on the richest two percent of the population, and used the revenue for direct investment and job creation, that would have been a stimulus worth celebrating. And doubtless, commentators like Krauthammer and Brooks would be condemning it.
Because the Congressional Budget Office assumed that all the Bush tax cuts would expire on December 31, 2010, the tax-cut deal creates a new budgetary reality. Suddenly, the ten-year deficit will be almost $900 billion larger than projected.
This, in turn, will give new ammunition to the deficit hawks. And here is where Obama has set up Social Security to take the hit, unless he drastically shifts ground.
The supposed crisis of Social Security is a phony. Social Security is financed by payroll taxes. Reduce unemployment, increase wages, and the crisis disappears. Even with only modestly better unemployment rates and wage growth, the modest projected shortfall could be eliminated by eliminating the cap on income subject to tax.
A Democratic president with strong progressive principles and political nerve would have taken his party into the mid-term election pledging never to cut Social Security and daring Republicans to take a similar pledge. Instead, Obama appointed a deficit commission with a majority of appointees wanting to cut the Democrats' signature program -- thus blurring party differences on the Democrats' biggest political winner.
Obama also signaled Democrats in Congress that he might well include Social Security cuts as part of a grand deficit-reduction deal. If that occurs, the civil war in the Democratic Party will only deepen.
Coda: The other day, I was part of a conversation in which the question came up: If Democrats in Congress do hold their noses and vote for the tax-cut deal in order to prevent unemployment benefits from being cut off on Christmas, what might they ask of Obama in return? There is not a great deal that he can deliver legislatively, unless he decides to get serious about wielding his veto pen.
The best idea to emerge was this: Democrats should demand, in return for their aye votes, that Obama appoint Elizabeth Warren to chair the National Economic Council, to succeed the departing Larry Summers. Warren is the one senior administration official who has not stopped fighting to protect regular Americans. She is not a Ph.D economist, but neither was the man for whom the Council was created, its first head, Robert Rubin. Nor was Rubin's successor, Gene Sperling.
According to press reports, the man about to get the job is Roger Altman, an investment banker and former deputy to Rubin. Altman has been to the White House at least three times in recent weeks, and his appointment seems all teed up. Altman would continue the Wall Street dynasty around Obama -- the very gang whose reckless deregulation and speculation brought us the economic collapse whose damage is now being used to justify wrecking Social Security.
Getting Warren instead of Altman would almost justify voting for this stinker of a tax deal. Maybe Warren could even get Obama to think twice about the political and economic wisdom of throwing Social Security on the pyre of deficit reduction.
14 October 2010
09 October 2010
Consumer Czar Warren Sees Transparency in Banking as Top Priority 5OKT10
ELIZABETH WARREN, the country needs more people like her in office, both appointed and elected......the entire nation would be better off.
Elizabeth Warren, who’s standing up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, talks transparency on PBS news hour, “This is about making sure that families have the power to make good decisions, that they can see the contracts, they can see what the stuff costs, and they can get a competitive market to start working for them.” http://to.pbs.org/aAgCYP
JIM LEHRER: Now: setting up a new federal agency to protect consumers. Jeffrey Brown has our newsmaker interview.
JEFFREY BROWN: Perhaps the most contentious among government responses to the financial crisis of the last few years was the creation of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. And perhaps the most polarizing figure in that debate is the woman whose idea it was and who was recently appointed to get it going, Elizabeth Warren.
A professor at the Harvard Law School, Ms. Warren served as head of a congressional panel that kept an eye on government bailout funds. And she joins me now. Welcome to you.
ELIZABETH WARREN, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Thank you.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, after years of writing and talking about this, here you are. What's the first priority? When would consumers know that you -- that this agency now exists?
ELIZABETH WARREN: Oh, they know now.
JEFFREY BROWN: They know?
ELIZABETH WARREN: They know in part because this agency doesn't exist because there was some interest group behind it, because there was a lot of ton lobbying money behind it.
They know because the only reason this agency exists is because millions of American families said, hey, yes, that really sounds like a sensible deal. That's a part of financial regulatory reform that I think is important and could make a difference in my life. They are the best allies of this agency. They are the owners of it.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, what's the priorities? What do you do first? I mean...
ELIZABETH WARREN: Well...
JEFFREY BROWN: And is your authority clear about what you do?
ELIZABETH WARREN: So, I think the priority is to keep in mind what the end goal is.
And the end goal here is on financial products, these credit products, so that American families can evaluate how much they cost, can see the risks in them, and can easily compare one product to another. And that means what these products have to be is short and easy to read and very clear in their terms, not buckets and buckets of fine print -- in between, you know, clause 16 and clause 17 lurks something else that will come out and bite you.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, in fact, you have been very blunt in the past. And even recently you used that term tricks and traps of the banking industry. So, this is what you're still after, and you're not backing away from any of that?
ELIZABETH WARREN: I'm not only backing away from any of that. What I'm really doing is reaching out to the banking industry and saying, some of you want to find another way to compete for your customers. Some of you have tried to put good products out there.
But those products get overshadowed by the ones that are full of tricks and traps, the folks who can pretend to offer you zero percent financing, when the reality is, they know they're going to make the money through the back door.
So, what I hope this is about is something that's good for families and quite frankly something that is also good for the financial institutions that are really willing to do head-to-head competition and serve those families.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, I introduced you as a polarizing figure. And, in fact, there was lots and lots of opposition to you taking this from the financial sector, from Wall Street, from many Republicans.
Do you have a lot of fence-mending to do here? And how are you doing that?
ELIZABETH WARREN: You know, I -- I suppose people would say I have a lot of fence-mending to do. But the truth is, I just don't see it that way.
What I see is that I'm here to help markets work for consumers. And that means lots of transparency. That means really being able to read and evaluate those products. That means some financial institutions are going to do very well.
Those who are really not afraid of the competition, who are really ready to come in and say, look, apples to apples, here's what I offer. And I'm will to compete for my customers, not by tricking them, but I'm willing to compete by giving them better customer service, giving them lower prices, doing cool new iPhone apps. Knock yourself out on competition.
Just do it in a way that the customer can see it. Don't do it in a way that surprises the customer through fine print, because that's never good news.
JEFFREY BROWN: Now, I said you have been appointed to get this agency going. In fact, the president named you a special adviser to the White House and Treasury. And that was widely seen as a way of avoiding what would be expected to be a contentious Senate confirmation hearing.
ELIZABETH WARREN: I don't think so.
JEFFREY BROWN: You don't think so?
ELIZABETH WARREN: No, I don't think so. So, look, there are two jobs on the table. And they were always there by statute. One certainly is the director of the agency. That's confirmation process. In a world of secret holds in which one senator can keep you from coming to the floor for debate, that would be a very long time, likely, for this agency for anybody who got named.
And, as the president explained to me very clearly, during that process, if I were nominated, I wouldn't be allowed to talk about the agency and I wouldn't be allowed to do anything to help getting it stand up.
There is a second job that was available. And it's clear in the statute. Somebody is supposed to get out there and get that agency going. And the truth is, one has a cool title, but the other one gets to work right now.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, is it an interim position that you have got, or...
ELIZABETH WARREN: I have a job for as long as the president wants me to have this job.
JEFFREY BROWN: Now, the -- so it's not an end run around getting...
ELIZABETH WARREN: It's a different job.
JEFFREY BROWN: You don't see it that way? Different job.
ELIZABETH WARREN: No. I mean, it's in the statute.
JEFFREY BROWN: And a director will be named?
ELIZABETH WARREN: Of course. Of course.
JEFFREY BROWN: Now, the opposition, the critiques continue to come. Just the other day, in the op-ed piece in The New York Times, William Cohan noted the agency will cost about $500 million a year.
He says that's a lot of -- quote -- "a lot of money for taxpayers to fork over every year to support a new government bureaucracy designed to protect us from our own worst impulses."
Now, that's the continuing -- we have heard this for a while now. People made mistakes, right? People took mortgages they shouldn't have taken, or they got credit, they accepted credit they shouldn't have taken.
And you're going to be out there to help that?
ELIZABETH WARREN: No. So, let me start with a couple of pieces. The first one is about the cost. We are not going to let this one slip by. The cost is designated as 10 percent of what the Federal Reserve gets, what the Fed gets. And the reason for that is, remember, the Fed all along had the power to protect American consumers, to clean up the consumer credit market, and the Fed failed to spend it, and -- spend their money in that way.
And so the notion is, you say, in effect, to the Fed, OK, Fed, 90 percent of your job is what it always was. It's monetary policy and all that other cool stuff. Ten percent is set aside for consumer issues. And that's what this agency is about. And that's the money it will get. This is not about spending new money.
But the second part of your question...
JEFFREY BROWN: But that's now going -- you're saying now that will be spent.
ELIZABETH WARREN: Now it is designated.
JEFFREY BROWN: And designated.
ELIZABETH WARREN: And it will be spent not on general monetary policy. It will be spent on consumer issues. And I think that's good.
JEFFREY BROWN: OK. And the second -- OK.
ELIZABETH WARREN: But the second one, this question about personal responsibility, you know, I really just want to say here, let's be clear.
This is not about an agency that comes in and says, oh, you shouldn't spend money at the mall or you should do or you shouldn't do that. This is about making sure that families have the power to make good decisions, that they can see the contracts, they can see what the stuff costs, and they can get a competitive market to start working for them.
They can compare it -- right now, try it. Compare four credit card contracts and tell me which one is more expensive. You literally can't do it. I don't care how long you pore over it, pages and pages and pages of fine print. You will never figure out the costs.
JEFFREY BROWN: And your hope is to get that down to...
ELIZABETH WARREN: I want to get it down very short, and I want people to be able to say, oh, that's the cheap one, because, when that starts to happen, people make better decisions, better personal responsibility, but they also have a market that's driving down costs right at the margin for what it is to produce it.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Elizabeth Warren, thanks for talking to us.
ELIZABETH WARREN: Thank you.
Elizabeth Warren, who’s standing up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, talks transparency on PBS news hour, “This is about making sure that families have the power to make good decisions, that they can see the contracts, they can see what the stuff costs, and they can get a competitive market to start working for them.” http://to.pbs.org/aAgCYP
NEWSMAKER INTERVIEW AIR DATE: Oct. 5, 2010
Consumer Czar Warren Sees Transparency in Banking as Top Priority
SUMMARY
Elizabeth Warren, the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, talks to Jeffrey Brown about the goals of her new agency and how she plans to empower Americans to make better financial choices.
JEFFREY BROWN: Perhaps the most contentious among government responses to the financial crisis of the last few years was the creation of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. And perhaps the most polarizing figure in that debate is the woman whose idea it was and who was recently appointed to get it going, Elizabeth Warren.
A professor at the Harvard Law School, Ms. Warren served as head of a congressional panel that kept an eye on government bailout funds. And she joins me now. Welcome to you.
ELIZABETH WARREN, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Thank you.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, after years of writing and talking about this, here you are. What's the first priority? When would consumers know that you -- that this agency now exists?
ELIZABETH WARREN: Oh, they know now.
JEFFREY BROWN: They know?
ELIZABETH WARREN: They know in part because this agency doesn't exist because there was some interest group behind it, because there was a lot of ton lobbying money behind it.
They know because the only reason this agency exists is because millions of American families said, hey, yes, that really sounds like a sensible deal. That's a part of financial regulatory reform that I think is important and could make a difference in my life. They are the best allies of this agency. They are the owners of it.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, what's the priorities? What do you do first? I mean...
ELIZABETH WARREN: Well...
JEFFREY BROWN: And is your authority clear about what you do?
ELIZABETH WARREN: So, I think the priority is to keep in mind what the end goal is.
And the end goal here is on financial products, these credit products, so that American families can evaluate how much they cost, can see the risks in them, and can easily compare one product to another. And that means what these products have to be is short and easy to read and very clear in their terms, not buckets and buckets of fine print -- in between, you know, clause 16 and clause 17 lurks something else that will come out and bite you.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, in fact, you have been very blunt in the past. And even recently you used that term tricks and traps of the banking industry. So, this is what you're still after, and you're not backing away from any of that?
ELIZABETH WARREN: I'm not only backing away from any of that. What I'm really doing is reaching out to the banking industry and saying, some of you want to find another way to compete for your customers. Some of you have tried to put good products out there.
But those products get overshadowed by the ones that are full of tricks and traps, the folks who can pretend to offer you zero percent financing, when the reality is, they know they're going to make the money through the back door.
So, what I hope this is about is something that's good for families and quite frankly something that is also good for the financial institutions that are really willing to do head-to-head competition and serve those families.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, I introduced you as a polarizing figure. And, in fact, there was lots and lots of opposition to you taking this from the financial sector, from Wall Street, from many Republicans.
Do you have a lot of fence-mending to do here? And how are you doing that?
ELIZABETH WARREN: You know, I -- I suppose people would say I have a lot of fence-mending to do. But the truth is, I just don't see it that way.
What I see is that I'm here to help markets work for consumers. And that means lots of transparency. That means really being able to read and evaluate those products. That means some financial institutions are going to do very well.
Those who are really not afraid of the competition, who are really ready to come in and say, look, apples to apples, here's what I offer. And I'm will to compete for my customers, not by tricking them, but I'm willing to compete by giving them better customer service, giving them lower prices, doing cool new iPhone apps. Knock yourself out on competition.
Just do it in a way that the customer can see it. Don't do it in a way that surprises the customer through fine print, because that's never good news.
JEFFREY BROWN: Now, I said you have been appointed to get this agency going. In fact, the president named you a special adviser to the White House and Treasury. And that was widely seen as a way of avoiding what would be expected to be a contentious Senate confirmation hearing.
ELIZABETH WARREN: I don't think so.
JEFFREY BROWN: You don't think so?
ELIZABETH WARREN: No, I don't think so. So, look, there are two jobs on the table. And they were always there by statute. One certainly is the director of the agency. That's confirmation process. In a world of secret holds in which one senator can keep you from coming to the floor for debate, that would be a very long time, likely, for this agency for anybody who got named.
And, as the president explained to me very clearly, during that process, if I were nominated, I wouldn't be allowed to talk about the agency and I wouldn't be allowed to do anything to help getting it stand up.
There is a second job that was available. And it's clear in the statute. Somebody is supposed to get out there and get that agency going. And the truth is, one has a cool title, but the other one gets to work right now.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, is it an interim position that you have got, or...
ELIZABETH WARREN: I have a job for as long as the president wants me to have this job.
JEFFREY BROWN: Now, the -- so it's not an end run around getting...
ELIZABETH WARREN: It's a different job.
JEFFREY BROWN: You don't see it that way? Different job.
ELIZABETH WARREN: No. I mean, it's in the statute.
JEFFREY BROWN: And a director will be named?
ELIZABETH WARREN: Of course. Of course.
JEFFREY BROWN: Now, the opposition, the critiques continue to come. Just the other day, in the op-ed piece in The New York Times, William Cohan noted the agency will cost about $500 million a year.
He says that's a lot of -- quote -- "a lot of money for taxpayers to fork over every year to support a new government bureaucracy designed to protect us from our own worst impulses."
Now, that's the continuing -- we have heard this for a while now. People made mistakes, right? People took mortgages they shouldn't have taken, or they got credit, they accepted credit they shouldn't have taken.
And you're going to be out there to help that?
ELIZABETH WARREN: No. So, let me start with a couple of pieces. The first one is about the cost. We are not going to let this one slip by. The cost is designated as 10 percent of what the Federal Reserve gets, what the Fed gets. And the reason for that is, remember, the Fed all along had the power to protect American consumers, to clean up the consumer credit market, and the Fed failed to spend it, and -- spend their money in that way.
And so the notion is, you say, in effect, to the Fed, OK, Fed, 90 percent of your job is what it always was. It's monetary policy and all that other cool stuff. Ten percent is set aside for consumer issues. And that's what this agency is about. And that's the money it will get. This is not about spending new money.
But the second part of your question...
JEFFREY BROWN: But that's now going -- you're saying now that will be spent.
ELIZABETH WARREN: Now it is designated.
JEFFREY BROWN: And designated.
ELIZABETH WARREN: And it will be spent not on general monetary policy. It will be spent on consumer issues. And I think that's good.
JEFFREY BROWN: OK. And the second -- OK.
ELIZABETH WARREN: But the second one, this question about personal responsibility, you know, I really just want to say here, let's be clear.
This is not about an agency that comes in and says, oh, you shouldn't spend money at the mall or you should do or you shouldn't do that. This is about making sure that families have the power to make good decisions, that they can see the contracts, they can see what the stuff costs, and they can get a competitive market to start working for them.
They can compare it -- right now, try it. Compare four credit card contracts and tell me which one is more expensive. You literally can't do it. I don't care how long you pore over it, pages and pages and pages of fine print. You will never figure out the costs.
JEFFREY BROWN: And your hope is to get that down to...
ELIZABETH WARREN: I want to get it down very short, and I want people to be able to say, oh, that's the cheap one, because, when that starts to happen, people make better decisions, better personal responsibility, but they also have a market that's driving down costs right at the margin for what it is to produce it.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Elizabeth Warren, thanks for talking to us.
ELIZABETH WARREN: Thank you.
16 September 2010
AP Source: Consumer Advocate Tapped For New Post 15SEP10
WHAT he really needs to do is appoint her to head the bureau and accept nothing but her approval from the Senate!
President Obama will appoint Wall Street critic Elizabeth Warren as a special adviser to oversee the creation of a new consumer protection bureau, a Democratic official said Wednesday.
Warren would report to both the Treasury Department and the White House in a role that would not require Senate confirmation. The 61-year-old Harvard University professor had been considered the leading candidate to head the bureau itself, but her lack of support in the financial community could have set the stage for contentious Senate hearings that may have ultimately derailed her confirmation.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak ahead of the formal announcement.
The independent consumer bureau was created under the financial regulatory bill Obama signed into law earlier this year. It will have vast powers to enforce regulations covering mortgages, credit cards and other financial products, and be financed by the Federal Reserve.
Warren has served as head of the Congressional Oversight Panel, charged with monitoring Treasury's handling of the $700 billion bank rescue fund known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program. She has at times clashed with Treasury over her committee's findings and conclusions about the use of TARP money.
As of Sept. 10, however, Warren has removed herself from the panel's work, a signal that the new Treasury post was a possibility.
He pending appointment was first reported by ABC News.
The financial regulation law gives Treasury the authority to run the consumer protection bureau while the nomination of its director is pending.
It was unclear whether Obama also intends to nominate a permanent director for the job this week.
Others mentioned as contenders to lead the agency are Michael Barr, an assistant treasury secretary who was a key architect of the administration's financial regulatory plans, and Eugene Kimmelman, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's antitrust division.
President Obama will appoint Wall Street critic Elizabeth Warren as a special adviser to oversee the creation of a new consumer protection bureau, a Democratic official said Wednesday.
Warren would report to both the Treasury Department and the White House in a role that would not require Senate confirmation. The 61-year-old Harvard University professor had been considered the leading candidate to head the bureau itself, but her lack of support in the financial community could have set the stage for contentious Senate hearings that may have ultimately derailed her confirmation.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak ahead of the formal announcement.
The independent consumer bureau was created under the financial regulatory bill Obama signed into law earlier this year. It will have vast powers to enforce regulations covering mortgages, credit cards and other financial products, and be financed by the Federal Reserve.
Warren has served as head of the Congressional Oversight Panel, charged with monitoring Treasury's handling of the $700 billion bank rescue fund known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program. She has at times clashed with Treasury over her committee's findings and conclusions about the use of TARP money.
As of Sept. 10, however, Warren has removed herself from the panel's work, a signal that the new Treasury post was a possibility.
He pending appointment was first reported by ABC News.
The financial regulation law gives Treasury the authority to run the consumer protection bureau while the nomination of its director is pending.
It was unclear whether Obama also intends to nominate a permanent director for the job this week.
Others mentioned as contenders to lead the agency are Michael Barr, an assistant treasury secretary who was a key architect of the administration's financial regulatory plans, and Eugene Kimmelman, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's antitrust division.
09 September 2010
Elizabeth Warren Makes Another White House Visit 9SEP10
WE can only hope this is a good sign, and that Pres. Obama is going to stand up to the greedy bankers and financial institutions and appont Elizabeth Warren for the good of the people and the nation.
WASHINGTON — Elizabeth Warren, a popular but polarizing consumer advocate, met with President Barack Obama at the White House Tuesday, adding to speculation she could be named to head a new consumer protection agency.
Warren also met with senior administration officials last month. However, White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said other candidates are still being considered and that no decision has been made on who will lead the agency, which was created under terms of the financial overhaul bill Obama signed into law earlier this year.
The agency will have vast powers to enforce regulations covering mortgages, credit cards and other financial products. Consumer advocates and labor groups want Obama to nominate Warren to lead the agency, but she has little support within the financial community and her nomination could set the stage for a divisive Senate confirmation hearing.
Warren now heads the Congressional Oversight Panel, which has been a watchdog over the Treasury Department's bank bailout fund.
Others mentioned as contenders to lead the consumer agency are Michael Barr, an assistant treasury secretary who was a key architect of the administration's financial regulatory plans, and Eugene Kimmelman, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's antitrust division.
Related News On Huffington Post: WASHINGTON — Elizabeth Warren, a popular but polarizing consumer advocate, met with President Barack Obama at the White House Tuesday, adding to speculation she could be named to head a new consumer protection agency.
Warren also met with senior administration officials last month. However, White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said other candidates are still being considered and that no decision has been made on who will lead the agency, which was created under terms of the financial overhaul bill Obama signed into law earlier this year.
The agency will have vast powers to enforce regulations covering mortgages, credit cards and other financial products. Consumer advocates and labor groups want Obama to nominate Warren to lead the agency, but she has little support within the financial community and her nomination could set the stage for a divisive Senate confirmation hearing.
Warren now heads the Congressional Oversight Panel, which has been a watchdog over the Treasury Department's bank bailout fund.
Others mentioned as contenders to lead the consumer agency are Michael Barr, an assistant treasury secretary who was a key architect of the administration's financial regulatory plans, and Eugene Kimmelman, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's antitrust division.
In case you missed it, today's bit of hot and sexy Beltway speculation concerns Congressional Oversight Panel Chair Elizabeth Warren. The Washington Post's Brady Dennis...
*This article was updated at 4:15 p.m. ET to reflect a clarification. In questioning Elizabeth Warren's candidacy to lead a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,...
Elizabeth Warren, a top candidate to lead the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, met quietly last week with some of her sharpest critics: big...
21 August 2010
Elizabeth Warren or Bust! from MOJO 18AUG10
I've been out of Washington for a little while—escaping the heat and the disheartening politics. I've even managed to go for more than a week without tweeting (with a few lapses). But it's hard to escape people who want to talk about what's happening back within the Beltway. What's edifying is discovering what folks outside Washington focus on.
Those of us who follow politics and policy for a living often have numerous matters on our to-watch lists. People outside the politerati usually have a truncated list, and often imbue a particular issue or controversy with special significance. A highly unscientific survey—based on comments made to me by highly-educated, self-identified, vacationing liberals who feel let down by President Barack Obama—shows that a top priority for Obama's base these days is Elizabeth Warren.
Can DC's top bailout cop beat the finance lobby—and Larry Summers?
BY HER OWN reckoning, Elizabeth Warren had two transformative experiences on the way to becoming official Washington's most unconventional expert on the financial industry. Let's start with the second. It was 2003, and Warren, an earnest-sounding and ever enthusiastic Harvard law professor who specializes in bankruptcy, was on the set of Dr. Phil. She had written a book with her daughter called The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers & Fathers Are Going Broke, and she'd expected to sit next to the host and explain its key points. Instead, Dr. Phil was interviewing a stressed-out couple with serious medical and financial troubles. After they mentioned they had obtained a second mortgage to pay off their credit card debt, the lights went up on Warren, and Dr. Phil asked her if this had been a smart step. No, she declared, because now they could lose their home if they defaulted.
As soon as her turn was over, Warren found herself thinking, "You've been doing this work for 20 years now, and it is unlikely that any of it has had as direct an impact as these 45 seconds." She had reached millions, some of whom might actually pay attention to her advice. "So here you are, Miss Fancy-Pants Professor at Harvard. What do you plan to do now? Is it all about writing more academic articles, or is it about making a difference for the families you study? I made a decision right then: It was for the families, not the self-aggrandizement of scholarship."
As soon as her turn was over, Warren found herself thinking, "You've been doing this work for 20 years now, and it is unlikely that any of it has had as direct an impact as these 45 seconds." She had reached millions, some of whom might actually pay attention to her advice. "So here you are, Miss Fancy-Pants Professor at Harvard. What do you plan to do now? Is it all about writing more academic articles, or is it about making a difference for the families you study? I made a decision right then: It was for the families, not the self-aggrandizement of scholarship."
Six years later, Warren is applying that people-first philosophy by simultaneously running the Congressional Oversight Panel, which monitors the $700 billion TARP bailout program on behalf of the taxpayers, and pushing for a new agency to protect consumers from predatory lenders. Now, as Congress seriously considers her proposal (and lobbyists maneuver to kill it), the question is: Can a middle-class populist in Ivy League garb change the world—or at least Big Finance?
Warren, 60, grew up in Oklahoma in what she terms "modest circumstances." Her father was a maintenance man; her mother worked for Sears. After graduating early from high school, she headed to college on a debate scholarship. Eventually she landed at Rutgers' law school, where she admits starting out somewhat clueless: When a fellow student asked if she would try out for the law review, she didn't know if he meant a magazine or a theatrical show. "All I knew was, if the smart kids were doing it, count me in."
She graduated in 1976, with no job lined up and nine months pregnant with her second child. Soon she'd started her own practice, handling wills, real estate closings, and the like. Later she taught nights at Rutgers, and then found a position at the University of Houston's law school—one of the first women ever hired there, she says, and the first who was not married to a faculty member. She began teaching bankruptcy law. "Bankruptcy," she says, "is about economic death and rebirth, a story of failure but survival, how people come back, how businesses come back. It's an American story."
It was around this time that Warren had her other epiphany. Conventional wisdom held that bankruptcy law was too friendly to debtors, and she shared that view. So she teamed up with two other academics to conduct research that, she thought, "would expose those crafty debtors exploiting loopholes in the law." To her surprise, the study—one of the largest of its kind—demonstrated that most bankruptcies were filed by struggling workers dealing with the loss of a job, a medical problem, or a family breakup. "It changed my vision not only of the bankruptcy system, but of the American economy," she says. "It put me face-to-face with hundreds of thousands of people who worked hard and played by the rules, but a pink slip, a bad diagnosis, or a spouse who ran off had left them in economic shambles." From that point on, Warren focused on how financial policy and law affected folks at the kitchen-table level, and by 2005 she was testifying on the Hill against legislation sought by credit card companies and the financial sector—and eventually passed by Congress—that made it tougher to file for bankruptcy.
Her passionate advocacy for family-friendly economic policies caught the eye of Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who'd disagreed with her on the bankruptcy bill. "He was struck by her articulate views on pro-consumer issues," a spokesman says, and so, last November, Reid appointed Warren to the TARP panel.
Shuttling between Cambridge and the panel's offices in DC—tucked away in a corner of the Government Printing Office—Warren broke the mold of the typical government commission. Instead of endlessly studying the issue before producing a bland, predictable doorstop of a report, the panel would publish a to-the-point, easy-to-comprehend assessment of a different slice of TARP each month. One of the reports revealed that the Treasury Department had paid $78 billion more than market value for the assets it purchased from banks. Another said that despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the bailouts, the financial system is still polluted by toxic assets that could trigger another meltdown. And the September report found that taxpayers might not recover up to $23 billion in TARP funds doled out to Chrysler and GM. Warren herself has done her part to publicize her panel's work, delivering testimony to Congress and appearing widely in the media (on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart inquired whether she had "powers to crush" companies that had gotten sweetheart deals from TARP), often bluntly taking Treasury to task for failing to make its programs transparent. At one point she told lawmakers that "Congress and the American public have no clear answer" from Treasury regarding its overall TARP strategy.
"She's done a great job calling attention to the Treasury's failing in ensuring that the taxpayers get a fair deal," says Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "That really is extraordinary in DC." Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz remarks, "What she is doing is making a lot of people very uncomfortable."
Indeed. In April, Thomas Cooley, a Forbes columnist, blasted Warren for politicizing the oversight panel to advance an anti-bank agenda, and one of the five-person panel's two Republican members, Jeb Hensarling, has criticized her for focusing the commission's work "on issues not central to our mandate." He also pushed for releasing the transcripts of the panel's private meetings, a move that Warren resisted because, a spokesman says, the members need to have "candid discussions" about their ongoing investigations.
Beyond monitoring how the government is mopping up after the financial crisis, Warren is pushing a proposal that could help prevent the next one: creating a Financial Product Safety Commission to protect consumers from abusive lenders. Mortgages and credit cards, she wrote in a 2007 journal article about the proposal, "should be subject to the same routine safety screening that now governs the sale of every toaster, washing machine, and child's car seat."
Straightforward as that sounds, it would represent a fundamental shift. "Regulating financial products based on fairness, simplicity, and appropriate risk is an entirely new paradigm," notes Reid Cramer, director of the New America Foundation's asset building program. In the wake of the financial meltdown, the idea has gained traction in Washington, thanks in part to Warren's plainspoken advocacy. "Almost unique among people with deep financial insight, Professor Warren speaks a language that ordinary people can easily comprehend," says Laurence Tribe, a colleague at Harvard Law. For example, when testifying before a congressional committee in June, Warren summed up the shift in banking this way: "Today's business model is about making money through tricks and traps."
Warren's proposal, of course, terrifies the finance industry, and with the White House vowing to push for it and Congress expected to start hammering out legislation, lobbyists have been preparing for battle. The American Bankers Association has proclaimed its opposition. Bill Himpler, executive vice president of the American Financial Services Association, says Warren's commission would "take us essentially back to the 1970s, where we had double-digit interest rates...and one-third the consumer credit available that we have now." Earlier this year, the Republicans on the Congressional Oversight Panel, Hensarling and former Sen. John Sununu, dissented from a panel report that called for the new watchdog, arguing that it "could well undermine the health of banks." In June, financial policy analyst Jaret Seiberg said that the industry's worst nightmare is that should Congress create such an agency, Warren would run it.
Does she want the position? "I have a job I love," she says. And while Warren would be a natural choice, she may not be a shoo-in. One senior Obama economic adviser told me that Lawrence Summers, the national economic adviser, "has a thing about her"—meaning he's not a fan. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Summers.) For her part, Warren says that she and Summers are friends, and a source familiar with their relationship characterizes them as sparring partners. "They're like two tennis players at Wimbledon: energetic, uncompromising. But they're adversaries, not enemies. When they put down the tennis rackets, they can still go out for a drink."
But a Warren colleague at Harvard (who admires her) notes that Summers—who as Harvard president speculated that women may not have the same innate math and science ability as men—might share the sentiments of fellow Harvard economists who dismiss Warren as insufficiently theoretical. "They think she shouldn't be talking about bankruptcy except as someone in the economics department would—that is, with formulas and theorems, not about how it affects real people." In Washington, though, that skill—explaining how grand financial concepts affect real-world families—may prove Warren's greatest asset. As she once put it on The Rachel Maddow Show, her rule for financial products is very basic: "If you can't explain it so the person on the other side can understand it, then you shouldn't sell it to them."
Warren, 60, grew up in Oklahoma in what she terms "modest circumstances." Her father was a maintenance man; her mother worked for Sears. After graduating early from high school, she headed to college on a debate scholarship. Eventually she landed at Rutgers' law school, where she admits starting out somewhat clueless: When a fellow student asked if she would try out for the law review, she didn't know if he meant a magazine or a theatrical show. "All I knew was, if the smart kids were doing it, count me in."
She graduated in 1976, with no job lined up and nine months pregnant with her second child. Soon she'd started her own practice, handling wills, real estate closings, and the like. Later she taught nights at Rutgers, and then found a position at the University of Houston's law school—one of the first women ever hired there, she says, and the first who was not married to a faculty member. She began teaching bankruptcy law. "Bankruptcy," she says, "is about economic death and rebirth, a story of failure but survival, how people come back, how businesses come back. It's an American story."
It was around this time that Warren had her other epiphany. Conventional wisdom held that bankruptcy law was too friendly to debtors, and she shared that view. So she teamed up with two other academics to conduct research that, she thought, "would expose those crafty debtors exploiting loopholes in the law." To her surprise, the study—one of the largest of its kind—demonstrated that most bankruptcies were filed by struggling workers dealing with the loss of a job, a medical problem, or a family breakup. "It changed my vision not only of the bankruptcy system, but of the American economy," she says. "It put me face-to-face with hundreds of thousands of people who worked hard and played by the rules, but a pink slip, a bad diagnosis, or a spouse who ran off had left them in economic shambles." From that point on, Warren focused on how financial policy and law affected folks at the kitchen-table level, and by 2005 she was testifying on the Hill against legislation sought by credit card companies and the financial sector—and eventually passed by Congress—that made it tougher to file for bankruptcy.
Her passionate advocacy for family-friendly economic policies caught the eye of Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who'd disagreed with her on the bankruptcy bill. "He was struck by her articulate views on pro-consumer issues," a spokesman says, and so, last November, Reid appointed Warren to the TARP panel.
Shuttling between Cambridge and the panel's offices in DC—tucked away in a corner of the Government Printing Office—Warren broke the mold of the typical government commission. Instead of endlessly studying the issue before producing a bland, predictable doorstop of a report, the panel would publish a to-the-point, easy-to-comprehend assessment of a different slice of TARP each month. One of the reports revealed that the Treasury Department had paid $78 billion more than market value for the assets it purchased from banks. Another said that despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the bailouts, the financial system is still polluted by toxic assets that could trigger another meltdown. And the September report found that taxpayers might not recover up to $23 billion in TARP funds doled out to Chrysler and GM. Warren herself has done her part to publicize her panel's work, delivering testimony to Congress and appearing widely in the media (on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart inquired whether she had "powers to crush" companies that had gotten sweetheart deals from TARP), often bluntly taking Treasury to task for failing to make its programs transparent. At one point she told lawmakers that "Congress and the American public have no clear answer" from Treasury regarding its overall TARP strategy.
"She's done a great job calling attention to the Treasury's failing in ensuring that the taxpayers get a fair deal," says Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "That really is extraordinary in DC." Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz remarks, "What she is doing is making a lot of people very uncomfortable."
Indeed. In April, Thomas Cooley, a Forbes columnist, blasted Warren for politicizing the oversight panel to advance an anti-bank agenda, and one of the five-person panel's two Republican members, Jeb Hensarling, has criticized her for focusing the commission's work "on issues not central to our mandate." He also pushed for releasing the transcripts of the panel's private meetings, a move that Warren resisted because, a spokesman says, the members need to have "candid discussions" about their ongoing investigations.
Beyond monitoring how the government is mopping up after the financial crisis, Warren is pushing a proposal that could help prevent the next one: creating a Financial Product Safety Commission to protect consumers from abusive lenders. Mortgages and credit cards, she wrote in a 2007 journal article about the proposal, "should be subject to the same routine safety screening that now governs the sale of every toaster, washing machine, and child's car seat."
Straightforward as that sounds, it would represent a fundamental shift. "Regulating financial products based on fairness, simplicity, and appropriate risk is an entirely new paradigm," notes Reid Cramer, director of the New America Foundation's asset building program. In the wake of the financial meltdown, the idea has gained traction in Washington, thanks in part to Warren's plainspoken advocacy. "Almost unique among people with deep financial insight, Professor Warren speaks a language that ordinary people can easily comprehend," says Laurence Tribe, a colleague at Harvard Law. For example, when testifying before a congressional committee in June, Warren summed up the shift in banking this way: "Today's business model is about making money through tricks and traps."
Warren's proposal, of course, terrifies the finance industry, and with the White House vowing to push for it and Congress expected to start hammering out legislation, lobbyists have been preparing for battle. The American Bankers Association has proclaimed its opposition. Bill Himpler, executive vice president of the American Financial Services Association, says Warren's commission would "take us essentially back to the 1970s, where we had double-digit interest rates...and one-third the consumer credit available that we have now." Earlier this year, the Republicans on the Congressional Oversight Panel, Hensarling and former Sen. John Sununu, dissented from a panel report that called for the new watchdog, arguing that it "could well undermine the health of banks." In June, financial policy analyst Jaret Seiberg said that the industry's worst nightmare is that should Congress create such an agency, Warren would run it.
Does she want the position? "I have a job I love," she says. And while Warren would be a natural choice, she may not be a shoo-in. One senior Obama economic adviser told me that Lawrence Summers, the national economic adviser, "has a thing about her"—meaning he's not a fan. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Summers.) For her part, Warren says that she and Summers are friends, and a source familiar with their relationship characterizes them as sparring partners. "They're like two tennis players at Wimbledon: energetic, uncompromising. But they're adversaries, not enemies. When they put down the tennis rackets, they can still go out for a drink."
But a Warren colleague at Harvard (who admires her) notes that Summers—who as Harvard president speculated that women may not have the same innate math and science ability as men—might share the sentiments of fellow Harvard economists who dismiss Warren as insufficiently theoretical. "They think she shouldn't be talking about bankruptcy except as someone in the economics department would—that is, with formulas and theorems, not about how it affects real people." In Washington, though, that skill—explaining how grand financial concepts affect real-world families—may prove Warren's greatest asset. As she once put it on The Rachel Maddow Show, her rule for financial products is very basic: "If you can't explain it so the person on the other side can understand it, then you shouldn't sell it to them."
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