Keep your friends close and your enemies closer? It appears either the Obama administration is doing a run around Congress or possibly muzzling Elizabeth Warren. Warren has been strongly desired to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Supposedly it would be difficult to get her confirmed in Congress. The Obama administration is hiring Elizabeth Warren as an assistant to the President, to de facto run the Consumer Financial Protection Agency claims The New York Times:
Elizabeth Warren, who conceived of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will oversee its establishment as an assistant to President Obama, an official briefed on the decision said Wednesday evening.
The decision, which Mr. Obama is to announce this week, would allow Ms. Warren, a Harvard law professor, to effectively run the new agency without having to go through a potentially contentious confirmation battle in the Senate. The creation of the bureau is a centerpiece of the Wall Street financial overhaul that Mr. Obama signed in July.
Elizabeth Warren did an interview on CNBC. Of the tidbits we have: get rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, why is Citigroup growing when it should be shrinking and 50% of all Commercial Real Estate will have loans greater than the properties are worth by the end of 2010 and it's such a problem it's gonna hurt the overall economy. Watch to see if I summed that up correctly:
It appears Obama is going to try to push financial regulatory reform again, although unfortunately the administration's plan wants to make the Federal Reserve a super regulator with expanded powers.
What is more interesting to note is how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is attacking the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Oh yes, lord forbid if there was regulation against ripping off the general public with credit cards, mortgages, banking fees and loans. (Note the Washington post got the agency title wrong as well as miscategorizes the Say on Pay Bill).
The wagons circling around TARP Congressional Oversight Panel Chair Elizabeth Warren should come to no surprise. She has the guts to try to do her job after all.
Naked Capitalism points out our biggest promoter of political economic Calvinball, House Chair Nancy Pelosi is now doing the dirty on one of the few voices of reason in D.C. (and of course this is true for Professor Warren is an outsider).
So why are we pointing a finger at Pelosi in particular? The next chapter is her appointment of one Richard Nieman to the Congressional Oversight Panel. Under the TARP rules, the House Majority leader selects one of the oversight panel members, so this choice was completely under her control.
Elizabeth Warren, Congressional Oversight Panel Chair for TARP funds did not say Paulson lied. But to fit it in the title of the Instapopulist, I am summing it up for you.
Below is a Bloomberg interview where when COP cranked the numbers, they discovered for every dollar given in TARP funds, on the day it was given, the United States received 66¢ in shares, warranties. In other words, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson told the panel one thing, that the funds with a direct 1:1 ratio exchange for stocks and warrenties and the reality was another, by the numbers. It was a $78 Billion dollar subsidy with no return, straight out of the box and this is the actual day of transaction. In other words a $78 billion giveaway to the banks.
While we are inundated with TV commercials promoting some illusion of early retirement and traveling in a six figure, gas guzzling RV for months at a time with the grand kids...reality is something completely different.
A new report(pdf) shows the opposite is happening. Americans are filing bankruptcy in droves and the most affected are older people.
Titled Generations of Struggle this study is by the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, sponsored by the AARP. Elizabeth Warren is one of the authors.
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