Elizabeth Warren Featured in New York Times

I’m a huge fanboy for Ms. Warren ever since I saw her in the Frontline about credit cards. This consumer protection agency is something she’s been advocating for three years:

Ms. Warren does say that if she and the administration lose on the agency’s passage, she’d like them to lose big — to force lawmakers, as she puts it, to leave “lots of blood and teeth” on the floor. If that happens, Ms. Warren will still have her own platform, starting with her nearly constant stream of television appearances. Hosts and cameramen love her: she has the friendly face of a teacher, the pedigree of a top law professor, the moral force of a preacher and the plain-spoken twang of an Oklahoman.“This is America’s middle class,” she recently said on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.” “We’ve hacked at it and pulled at it and chipped at it for 30 years now, and now there’s no more to do. We fix this problem going forward, or the game really is over.”

via Behind Consumer Agency Idea, a Fiery Advocate – NYTimes.com.

From bits from her 2009 apperance on NOW:

Well, we did make one big change. And that is we now know that the government will race in to rescue large financial institutions. And this is really important because it has changed the whole economic market. The part that has changed is that now we see the government as either an explicit or an implicit guarantor of huge parts, big, of the big part of the financial institution’s system. And that means pricing is distorted. And it means we live in a world of moral hazard, squared.

On banker bonuses:

This one, I have to say, truly amazes me, that these folks who are supposed to be the smartest folks in the room, believe that they can take taxpayer money and save their businesses from complete destruction, and still continue to reward themselves as if—they had earned it all. It’s as if they don’t understand the world changed when you had to take money from the taxpayers to stay alive. Well, evidently not. And—I think what that means is that we really have to change this one now, again, by statute. I’m sorry, I—I was really a believer. “The market will heal itself, everything will correct here,” at least on executive pay. Because no one would be so foolish as to think, “I’ll take taxpayer money and then, while people are unemployed, I will lard my—myself with—with pay.” We’ve gotta change the executive compensation structure. And it’s straight across the board.

I’m glad she’s on our side.


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