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Tim Geithner Opposes Nominating Elizabeth Warren to Lead New Consumer Agency
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has expressed opposition to the possible nomination of Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to a source with knowledge of Geithner's views.
The financial reform bill passed by the Senate on Thursday mandates the creation of a new federal entity charged with protecting consumers from predatory lenders.
But if Geithner has his way, the most prominent advocate for creating the agency may not be picked to lead it.
Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School whose 2007 journal article advocating the creation of such an agency inspired policymakers to enact it into law, has rocketed to prominence since the onset of the financial crisis as one of the leading reform advocates fighting on behalf of American taxpayers.
Warren has been an aggressive proponent for the bureau in public and behind the scenes, working regularly with President Barack Obama's top advisers and the Democratic leadership in Congress. Since 2008, she has overseen the Congressional Oversight Panel, a bailout watchdog created to keep tabs on how two administrations spent hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out Wall Street while struggling to keep distressed homeowners out of foreclosure and small businesses from collapsing.
Yet while her work on behalf of a federal unit designed solely to protect borrowers from abusive lenders has been embraced by the administration, Warren's role as a bailout watchdog led to strained relations with the agency her panel has taken to task with brutal reports every month since Obama took office: Geithner's Treasury Department.
It's no secret the watchdog and the Treasury Secretary have had a tenuous relationship. Geithner's critics have enjoyed watching Warren question him during his four appearances before her panel. Her tough, probing questions on the Wall Street bailout and his role in it -- often delivered with a smile -- are featured on YouTube. One video is headlined "Elizabeth Warren Makes Timmy Geithner Squirm."
While her grilling of Geithner in September, over what members of Congress have called the "backdoor bailout" of Wall Street through AIG, inspired the "squirm" video, just last month Warren pressed Geithner on the administration's lackluster foreclosure-prevention plan, Making Home Affordable. Criticizing him for Treasury's failure to keep families in their homes, she questioned Treasury's commitment to homeowners.
Warren's persistent oversight is part of the reason for Geithner's opposition, according to the source.
In addition, her increasing public profile could make it difficult for Geithner, who will oversee the unit until it's transferred to the Federal Reserve. His role would involve trying to balance her advocacy on behalf of borrowers with the demands of the nation's major financial institutions, his traditional constituency.
Geithner's objections to Warren taking over that role also involve her views on Wall Street, sources say. The longtime professor believes the nation's megabanks are Too Big To Fail and have been among the biggest abusive lenders in the country. Her toughness on giant banks is said to be a longtime source of tension with Geithner.
Obama's top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, is also said to have a strained relationship with Warren, though his stance on her nomination is not known.
Democrats in Congress have been among her most enthusiastic supporters. House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank is one of many influential members who hope she'll get the nod.
And while labor and consumer groups often butted heads with Geithner on various aspects of the financial reform legislation, they have lauded his support for strong consumer protections. Warren, however, has been referred to as a "rock star" among consumer advocates. Many have told HuffPost they're hoping Obama picks her to head the new bureau.
Geithner's opposition could have political implications for a White House determined to prove it's gotten tough on Wall Street. Since March, Obama has devoted four of his weekly Saturday addresses to highlight and promote the consumer agency.
In March 2009, in response to a question during a town hall event in Southern California about the bailout for Wall Street firms and whether Obama supported tougher consumer protections on credit cards, Obama promoted Warren's academic work:
"The truth of the matter is that the banking industry has used credit cards and pushed credit cards on consumers in ways that have been very damaging," Obama said according to a transcript. "There's a woman named Elizabeth Warren who's a professor at Harvard who did a great deal of study around this. And she made a simple point. You know, if you bought a toaster, and the toaster blew up in your face, there would be a law, a consumer safety law, that would protect you from buying that toaster. But if you get a credit card that blows up in your face, that starts off at zero-percent interest, and once they kind of suck in the -- buying a bunch of stuff and suddenly it's 29 percent; and if you're late two days, suddenly, you know, you just paid another $30, and all kinds of fine print that a lot of folks didn't understand -- well, somehow that's okay.
"I think generally having some consumer safety, some consumer protection around credit cards, is important," Obama added.
Three months later, the administration released its blueprint for how it wanted to fix the nation's broken financial system. Warren's idea for a consumer agency was a heavily-promoted part of it.
Warren, a Treasury Department spokesman and a White House spokesperson all declined to comment for this article.
34 Comments so far
Show AllNo surprise here that Timmy and Larry oppose Elizabeth Warren's nomination. Why waste space on CD stating the obvious?
So true- As Greenspan, no elitist slouch, comes out in favor of letting Bush's tax cuts expire, Timmy, Larry, Barck Ohbummer, Rahmbo, et al are lobbying hard to keep them in place. As Hunter S. Thompson said about Nixon and his cronies, " the scum also rises "; so is the scum rising in the Democratic party. Ohbummer and company are running like cockroaches from a light. Their nest is Wall Street where the table scraps have a 4 Star rating.
Rahmbo, LOL!!
Nasiripour sez: "And while labor and consumer groups often butted heads with Geithner on various aspects of the financial reform legislation, they have lauded his support for strong consumer protections."
***
WTF?
Where did this sentence come from?
What 'strong consumer protections' does Geithner actually support?
Hmm, the lack of a link compels me to think their arse. How truth-y.
Their not wanting Warren is reason enough to get rid of Geithner and Summers.
Fire the three bankster stooges, Timmy, Larry, and Ben immediately! They helped create the financial collapse and never should have been rehired by obama in the first place. These three stooges used trillions in taxpayer money to bailout the big banksters. The only thing Timmy, Larry, and Ben stabilized was the bankster's bonuses.
Replace them with people like Warren and Stiglitz. Their policies are the best hope for saving the US middle class and would help us create a sustainable, livable future.
We can't fire those guys, who'll run the country?
Geithner, like Mussolini, should be hung upside down at a gas station. Given the current news, it should be a BP gas station.
Tim Geithner, who started his job looking like a mere wimp, now looks like a wimpy but treacherous weasel. Their arrogance doesn't really surprise me that much, I guess, but the utter lack of response from Obama-boosters and the MSM is just plain perverse.
Weasels are nobel creatures with a useful place in nature! The same can not be said for Mr. Geithner!
Why am I not suprised...
Where can I find a website with a petition to sign that demands Warren be given the job?
Where can I find a website with a petition to get rid of the three stooges leading our financial ship into another iceberg?
I found a petition to sign:
http://www.credoaction.com/campaign/pick_warren/index2.html
Sooooooo I'm going to sign the Warren petition to get her to head the Consumer Protection Agency!!! and why should'nt you?
What Timmy wants Timmy gets. Obama has no problem spitting in the eye of progressives, but he's putty in Wall Street's hands and completely subservient to their man in the White House.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
If Ms. Warren is smart (and she appears to be), I would suggest she not do any flying anytime while Timmy is anywhere *near* those in political power.
And stay away from windows.
And out of slow moving convertibles.
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
"His role would involve trying to balance her advocacy on behalf of borrowers with the demands of the nation's major financial institutions, his traditional constituency." What a joke. There is no balance Geithner is in bed with Wall Street and everyone know it.
Ms Warren certainly should not fly in any small airplanes. Obama doesn't have the balls to displease Geithner, or Bernanky, or any of the other bandits he's beholden to. Obama is pandering to progressives until the real consumer agency hack is named.
Rarely is anything as crystal clear as appointing Elizabeth Warren to the new Consumer Agency. It's a basic test of Obama's credibility and seriousness to make financial regulatory reform work..
President Obama should pay attention to the political people on this one and not the meritocratic technocrats (Geithner and maybe Summers),
Barney Frank doesn't have a tin ear politically. Geithner does. Obama if he is "street smart" will listen to Frank, appoint Warren and fight hard for her to be confirmed.
David Cohen,
Washington, DC
I agree with your first two statements and half of your third. Barney Fife is just as obstructive and as bad as Timmy and Larry.
There is an easy choice. Dump Geithner. No one likes him except Obama and Goldman Sachs.
Whatever hope there is in the new legislation rests the shoulders of whoever administers the new Consumer Protections Agency.
Obama nominated the weasel Geithner in spite of the appalling conflict of interests and his record as a failure.
We really have to push this one and force him to do the right at least once every two years.
It is so easy and much needed: fire Geitner's ass. Then fire the other Clinton and Bush hangons and get some change.
Ditto on everything. Why are these spoilers allowed to stay on? If we are going to get our Country back, anything linked with the Bushes and Cheney must go. Hang in there, Mr. President. We the people know that you got way more than any one man can handle. It's clear that it was necessary to maintain some continuity by keeping on some of the former staff. However, you now have enough reliable people aboard to clear out the remaining crumbs from Bush's kitchen cabinets. I have TOTAL confidence in you and it is clear that everything you do is wisely thought out while looking at the WHOLE picture.
"Hang in there Mr. President"
Oh my......
Galenwainwright makes a vital point. Whether or not anyone, including Geithner, attempts to murder Warren, (and I wouldn't put it past anyone in Washington, where there might be one and a half people, total, who virulently oppose the capital crimes of Wall Street, publicly call the Wall Street crowd, particularly the Goldman sachs bunch, for what they are - scum, and would have the courage of their convictions at vote time) should not blind anyone to the reality that the Geithners and Summers and their ilk are not above it. They are paid puppets of a system that has precisely zero respect for human life, and merely uses the democratic mechanisms of a capitalistic country to steal ever greater quantities of money, NO MATTER THE HUMAN COST. The Geithners and the Summers and Christ only knows who else in this criminal excuse for a government that is squareley and plainly spooning and bum-fucking the financial industries in bed, will murder or will hire it out, if their position in the New Feudalism is threatened.
Today's news of Goldman Sachs having to pay out a lousy $550M, while its executives and soldiers watch their stock rise and laugh at the Administration and the country, and the so-called financial reform bill that isn't worth wiping your arse with, underline this contempt for people among the judges, the legislators, the money-changers. There is exactly NO intention to even begin to elevate people above money in Obama's America. Witness the slap in the face called the 'health-care reform bill'. This is the kind of place in which, to speak of a hypothetical science-fiction scenario for a moment, if Obama WERE for real and honestly tried to get something done about the hypercapitalistic rape of the people of the U.S. and the world, he would be found with a bullet in his skull in the Oval Office. He did not get the worthless job of 'president', and will not keep it, by opposing Wall Street, or even trying for a somewhat acceptable compromise with the high priests of money.
One of the very greatest insults of this modern America is that most of these contemptuous proponents of hypercapitalism call themselves 'Christian.' Is there anything which could more cause you to throw up? The fucking gong-show called the 'Presidency' is absolutely out of bounds to anyone not willing to profess the willingness to kiss the arse of the political correctness of the United States being a 'Christian' nation, not willing to merely be seen to be kissing Jesus' arse. Pathetic.
And the American people are largely clueless as to the meaning of any of this, and the threats to themselves, their children and their grandchildren, because they will shoot off their fool faces about their wonderful country, and a lot of childish 'patriotic' horseshit, but THEY WILL NOT RISE UP TO DEFEND IT OR TAKE IT BACK. They're conceivably more fucked than the likes of the Geithners and the Summers or the Obamas, because they largely believe the bullshit myths about their country, largely believe in its hypermilitarism as defining the country, and will ceaselessly engage in a bewildering variety of deranged and deluded acts, such as this mentally retarded 'tea party' movement, and the support and encouragement of the likes of Sarah Palin. If the United States had its shit together, the Sarah Palins wouldn't be able to leave their houses for fear of being stoned to death, and by now, Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and the rest of the right-wing neo-con mob, along with three-quarters of the 'born-again christians' and virtually every banker, would already have been stoned to death.
But the people will not get their country back, and they will see what it is now reduced to very bloody civil war and third world status if they are not prepared to jettison their cherished ignorance and fight for it.
Timmy is a schmuck of the first water. If Obama doesn't
appoint Warren you can mark it down as the watermark of the
descent of his presidency....then you can drain the swamp and see where the scum line was.
Ok people, not sure what the big hoopla is all about. Does anybody think another government agency is gonna keep the financial sector in check. Well, i got a bridge to sell.
This is just gonna be another taxpayer money pit like the Fed and the SEC. And after the next meltdown, there's gonna be another and another one and so on.
There is a web site that is is accepting signatures in support of Elizabeth Warren,
HOPE in Obama is worth as much as the CHANGE in your pocket.
Warren rocks!
Geithner sucks.
So, besides signing email letters on political Websites, email letters which never will be read, not in a million years, what else are you going to do? Call your Congressman and talk to some aide, who is not really interested in talking to you, but is merely running interference for the Congressman? Yeah! That'll help!
The money boys rule! Period.
Why, for instance, is it that a very interesting story about how the French government has recently classified Goldman-Sachs in their country as "terrorists" has never been reported in American media?
Well, very likely for the same reason that the BBC's 5 year investigation into the disappearance of the famous 8-9 Billion dollar smackers, which somehow simply vanished into thin air, was never reported in this country. The good old BBC tracked down every nickel and dime of the money and published it in a report and then the Bushies said "Oh, no! You can't publish that information in this country." And that was the end of that.
Anybody starting to see a pattern here?
I wouldn't wish the job of heading the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau upon my worst enemy. I predict it will soon become a psychological nightmare for the incumbent.
Elizabeth, by a chance of my procuring, you will be visited by three ghosts - the Ghost of Consumer Protection Past, the Ghost of Consumer Protection Present, and the Ghost of Future Consumer Protection. Expect the first when the bell tolls ONE.
(Back of hand to pained forehead) LOOK TO SEE ME - - NO MORE!!!
Let's see, well Larry Summers doesn't like Elizabeth Warren because...oh, dare I say it? Well, when as president of Harvard, when he asked why there aren't more women in high positions at Harvard, he said it was because of the"..difference of availablitiy of apptitude at the high end."
SAY WHAT? Oh, right she's a woman. Oh Larry, if only you had stayed with MIT and continued with physics....are you a particle or a wave? Oh, right, the observer does affect the outcome.
Well, LAR,, if you think that women can't compete at the" high end," and since WOMEN are 50% of the population, then it's more important than ever to PROTECT us by having a strong CONSUMMER PROTECTION agency. I'm sure that there are men too who are confused by by credit card rules, or who have trouble doing their taxes...oh wait.
That issue brings up Tim Geithner....yeah that 50% of the taxes that he missed paying? How did he do that, the rest of us would like to know? Most of us won't be up for any Senate confirmation, so hey, we probably won't be found out!
The reason WE need a person ( who happens to be a woman) who understands real consumer issues, is because YOU TWO don't have a clue about living in the "real world."
Larry, you have no apptitude for the "low end," where most of the world is living, and Tim, gosh, mishandling your own taxes after all of the training? No connfidence vote here.
You both have been embedded with Wall St. too long, and Elizabth Warren, who came from study and experience and life in the real world, seems just fine to me. Tim, it's great that you speak Chinese , Japanese, but I don't think you truly understood, the lingo of Main Street ( which you two guys have changed into MAIM St.)
And Lar, congrats on being the first Jewish prez of Harvard, but we don't care...you blew that one too. Hmmm, women can't do math, does Sally Ride know this? Oh yes, your feeling that unemployment and welfare just encourage people to not work....that really sucks. Tell you what, YOU volunteer to be in charge of finding those new jobs. Wow, all by yourself, Lar, you have renamed Einstein's" cosmological constant "as being the result of lazy workers. However, you have turned the finances of the U.S. into one big BLACK HOLE!
Personally, I think it's just you two that can't do math, of course not even Alan G. can figure it out, I mean he said the financial system was just too complicated. We are on to you about TARP, it really stands for:, Terrorists Are Raping Public!
Take the advice of Abagail Adams, and.." remember the ladies." Elizabeth Warren seems like a GREAT CHOICE, but of course, as regards your thinking, we are perfectly clear as to why YOU DON'T.
This is the person who should have been nominated for the Supreme Court position Kagan will be placed in. I won't bet on her being chosen for this position either. Without a strong person to oversee the approved financial 'reform' the bill is worthless.
I don't see any comments really expecting Obama to do the right thing and nominate an independent person with integrity. So it's going to be hard to say Obama will disappoint us. Even if Warren were appointed it is a largely symbolic gesture. She cannot effectively control a Consumer Protection Agency located in the Lion's den and under its paw. In fact when this whole financial industry blows up again, and I think it will be soon, it would be better not to have Elizabeth, anointed as one of our own in charge of Consumer Protection. That agency, so placed and constructed is sure to fail in its mission. It would just discredit her. If Warren were smart she'd go back to Harvard and wait.
We have a terribly corrupt politics in this country with the left unrepresented, the center right called left by the extreme right which controls the media and presents itself as the only ones fiscally responsible. You can't reform or correct or even protect the public in this environment because this is fundamentally not a Democracy. We can only watch it collapse and hope that both Democrats and Republicans will be so thouroughly discredited that they will no longer function. This will only happen through a political upheaval and travail this country has yet to experience. But something tells me its going to happen.