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Today's Top News
Obama Names Elizabeth Warren to Set Up New Consumer Body
WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama was Friday to name Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren to set up a powerful new consumer protection office, part of this year's Wall Street reforms, the White House announced.
Rather than name Warren to head the consumer body, the White House said she will play a key role in setting it up, a designation that avoids a Senate confirmation battle over the controversial consumer advocate who has drawn Republican fire on Capitol Hill. (AFP) "Warren will play the lead role in setting up the Bureau and ensuring it is as effective as possible," the White House said.
"Warren will also advise the president on policies and programs that are designed to protect the financial interests of middle class families."
Rather than name Warren to head the consumer body, the White House said she will play a key role in setting it up, a designation that avoids a Senate confirmation battle over the controversial consumer advocate who has drawn Republican fire on Capitol Hill.
In remarks prepared for the announcement later Friday, Obama hailed the new consumer body.
"Never again will folks be confused or misled by the pages of barely understandable fine print that you find in agreements for credit cards, mortgages, and student loans," he said.
"Basically, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will be a watchdog for the American consumer, charged with enforcing the toughest financial protections in history," he said.
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154 Comments so far
Show AllI really wish she would run for president but then she is not stupid nor even a politician.
Unless she can find a way to bring back the "Glass-Steagall Act" of 1933 which worked very well for 60 years in keeping a check on Banks and other Financial Institutions,there will be no progress in controlling what happens on "Wall Street". There may be a temporary halt in the gluttony for wealth and power, but rest assured it will be short lived. The thirst for "Power and Wealth" can only be controlled by law with strict enforcement by the authorities.
yes
Never again will folks be confused or misled by me. Elizabeth may mean right but it is really another con by the consummate con man. Con the consumers alright! She will be constrained from stepping on the toes and marginalized from any real consumer protection like reversing the Wall Street bailouts ect. Credit card small print suits them just fine.
"Rather than name Warren to head the consumer body, the White House said she will play a key role in setting it up, a designation that avoids a Senate confirmation battle over the controversial consumer advocate who has drawn Republican fire on Capitol Hill."
If the three stooges-Barry, Timmy and Larry- really were sincere about giving this "Consumer Financial Protection Bureau" (sic) any teeth, then they would simply appoint Warren as chair of the bureau with a recess appointment. This would avoid having to get Senate approval, at least for a couple of years.
Actually, a recess appointment would last only until January.
Thanks for the correction. Even if she were only the chair until January, it might be hard to unseat her if she were making headway. The reactionary factions would have a harder time justifying her removal.
Obama doesn't make recess appointments and he will never ask for the veto pen once the Repugs take control of Congress in January.
If she was REALLY smart, she'd say no and run for president in the 2012 Dem primary, for this move is a deliberate attempt to defang the agency and marginalize her by giving her a position with no authority.
"Never again will folks be confused or misled by the pages of barely understandable fine print that you find in agreements for credit cards, mortgages, and student loans," he said.
"Basically, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will be a watchdog for the American consumer, charged with enforcing the toughest financial protections in history," he said.
It is hard to believe this will be true, considering how Wall Street rules and how President Obama has misled us so far. However, I agree that Elizabeth Warren would never have been approved to head this Consumer Protection Bureau, so to make her the architect for this agency does make sense. Is this a crack of sunlight?
You mean the next to the last one?? Hunh? Anyway, even if she is a bone tossed to the Left in an election year, she's a smart one, and she's got real integrity.I wish her well, and hope she turns out to have some real power. If she doesn't, I suspect she'll quit.
Hmm. Wonder who that might be: probably not Nancy Pelosi, who, whatever you might think about her, has real power (that may soon be HAD).Maybe the non-Eleanor to our non-Rooseveltian President.Obama's blown it, and so has she.She grows gardens I believe. Curiously, Eleanor had real power, although she had no official position.Part of that power was keeping FDR's feet to the fire.
Jill, I deleted a long, blathery post yesterday about my experience working in a state agency regional office under a Regional Director who, like Obama, was a great one for creating special positions or "projects" to reward favored employees, or move controversial or problem employees to "rescue" them from well-deserved disciplinary actions in their home offices.
He would ebulliently justify these dodgy actions as "thinking outside the box"; he prided himself on finding supposed "win-win outcomes" that allowed him to superficially solve problems without directly confronting the conflicts. (Eventually, he made history by being the first Regional Director to be fired from that position.)
So Obama's various stunts, including his touchy-feely beer bash with Henry Louis Gates and that Cambridge cop, and the Shirley Sherrod debacle, induced déjà vu in Yr. Obd't Servant.
I also used to work with a guy at Region who enlisted in the Army expecting to be deployed to Vietnam, but ended up in Germany for his entire tour.
In state bureaucracies, despite all of the Civil Service regulations, people are occasionally given a bogus job due to favoritism, internal and external politics, or some other irregular machination.
My friend, harking back to his Army days, referred to these as "machts nicht" jobs-- a German idiom meaning "meaningless". When new administrations came in, prominent middle-level VIPs were often reassigned to "machts nicht" jobs and became non-persons.
The more the bosses insist that some newly-created, customized position is the real deal, the more one may be assured that it is indeed a "machts nicht" job. It's seen as a benevolent form of internal exile, in which the non-person is given face-saving prestige and even nominal authority.
I haven't yet come across any public response from Warren to this machts nicht job, although it sounds like a done deal. If she is indeed playing along, I hope she has her own private good reasons for doing so. If she's actually conned herself into accepting this as a "win-win outcome", there's less to her than meets the eye.
I'm pretty sure the expression is "macht nichts," which translates to "do nothing," or if used as a complete sentence, "it doesn't matter."
Es tut mir furchtbar leid!
You're quite right-- it's been many decades since high school German and I haven't kept up.
Whenever we reviewed idiomatic expressions, the old Christian Brother who taught German I would bellow, "LITERALLY...", as in "'Macht nichts'-- LITERALLY, 'makes nothing'."
On our pre-Internet "Officevision" text messages, my ex-Army co-worker spelled it "moxnix". ;)
Warren is a Harvard empty suit, just like Obama. Good insight on your part and information.
Obama is a Harvard empty suit, too.
Jill, And you went and broke my balloon!
interesting picture...
a little, lone, lost-looking head dwarfed by the faceless, dark wood of the private club of the wealthy...
apropos...
I picked up on that right away, too.
Dark wood means nothing: are you referring to the dark wood at Harvard, where she is a professor, or the dark wood in the Dew Drop Inn? Dark Wood knows no class or precinct.
This "change we can believe in" guy is good. Real good. He slipped it to us again before we had a chance to grab our ankles!
Don't you just love this great orator and friend of the middle-class American? No doubt about it, he has succeeded in elevating lying to a new art form.
The MSNBC line-up, except for Dylan Ratigan, must be ecstatic over yet another sterling achievement by the Darling of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
What (or who) is next?
Cool. Another government agency.
For God sake,to listen to you little Sunshines, You'd think Obama was worse than shrub.
Yes, I'm disappointed too, but we have no concept of the pressures he has to deal with.
Grant
pressure...I like that...
the pressures involved with a column of hydrocarbons gushing from the ocean floor a mile down...
the pressures involved with forcing millions of gallons of toxic chemicals into porous rock to access natural gas...
the pressures used to blast the tops off of mountains, or bullets into innocent bodies...
even gravity can provide pressure, pulling tall buildings to the ground, land-based ice masses seaward, or plain water into a bound person's mouth until they almost drown...
the pressures involved with thawing methane rising from the arctic shelf...
presidents deal with many pressures, indeed...
hey, have a great friday, though!
Or like Obummer they don't. I keep expecting him to come out with the Jimmy Carter sweater, and the Jimmy Carter speach. Then go back to his room like Carter did and not bother anyone till we can elect a real president.
That may be too much to ask. Actually I was hoping for a Japenese style apoligy, at daybreak ;)
>^^<
Grant, thanks. I hear ya. Only on this blog could progressives convert a generally positive news item like this into such a downer.
I'm not optimistic about the future of this self-deluded and nearly bankrupt nation we live in, but at my age I relish whatever positive scraps of news I can find. There aren't many.
But so much for that. Over time, I've become convinced that anything short of a massive socialist revolution -- one in which everyone to the right of Bernie Sanders gets sent to a Re-education Camp for seven years -- will never please more than about 5% of CD-ers. I whine, therefore I am.
"But so much for that. Over time, I've become convinced that anything short of a massive socialist revolution -- one in which everyone to the right of Bernie Sanders gets sent to a Re-education Camp for seven years -- will never please more than about 5% of CD-ers."
And over time I've become convinced that nothing short of long bread lines, massive joblessness, massive homelessness, etc., etc., will convince folks like yourself into taking our government back from the duopoly and the crooks that control it, and even then ....
"I whine, therefore I am."
I stick my head in the sand, therefore I am ....
"You'd think Obama was worse than the shrub."
Indeed, he is worse than the Shrub.
Obama out-droned Bush one year in office. Obama used more drones in one year than the Shrub used in 4.
Obama wants to force us to by into the insurance cartel--even Bush didn't go there.
True, he did nothing good for our medical system either, but at least he didn't force us the purchase from the cartel.
For one to be able to *outshrub* the Shrub--well-- that's pretty damned awful.
A traitor is worse than an idiot.
'To live outside the law you must be honest.'
__ Bob Dylan
It will be hard to believe that she is as smart as she is supposed to be if she takes this job.
She will set up the agency, and as soon as the smoke clears, a permanent director will be appointed, probably Geithner's assistant, whose name was floated around recently. He will then make whatever changes are needed to prevent the agency from doing much good.
As long as Summers is in place, as a personal assistant to the President Warren will have about as much clout as Paul Volker has - little to none.
Elizabeth Warren near the highest eschelons of power? I think this is double-plus good (NOT!).
Seriously, what to expect. I figure she will give it a shot, and see how much of an impact she can have. How resourceful is she? (I don't know, but that may be an important question). When she gets to be at loggerheads with Geithner and Summers, who will prevail (I suspect the bad guys will, but again, I don't know for sure). There are lots of unknowns, important unknowns.
What can we do in the meantime? Stay tuned, stay informed, and share what we learn with others. And then, in critical moments, apply pressure, in any way we can. Having her in that symbolic, ill-defined position is still better than having nothing, but to what extent it's too early to say.
Deliberate cross posting from another EW topic.
I feel that even this compromise is a =mistake= for Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth does not seem to think so, and of course has no obligation to take my (elder brother-like) recommendation that she flee from Washington.
For the 30 years I was a clinical psychologist I had the same desk blotter, with a clear plastic cover. Under that cover I kept my favourite quote by George Bernard Shaw: "It is my business to be right when others are wrong." And that was true, and I frequently astonished healthcare bureaucrats and physicians with my predictions regarding their patients.
This one is easy. Elizabeth is going to be harmed by attempting this compromise with the Obama administration.
The hard question is "by how much?" President Obama and VP Biden have personal physicians. Elizabeth either needs access to theirs, or her own personal doctor starting SOON. As a practicing Methodist, Elizabeth Warren needs a local church family to wrap arms around her - - SOON.
Trylon
This is a smart move by Obama and Warren.
She does not have to follow the orders of treasury and she is the official ear and voice of the consumer to the people and our president.
She now can even set up a division to police Health Insurance!
Cant you folks give her a break?
When Warren is sold down the river, I hope she says so in the clearest and loudest terms imagineable.
I agree. Perhaps the greatest service she will be able to perform will be to blow the whistle on the corrupt intent and the corrupt processes of this administration. But if she holds true to what she's said (she told Jon Stewart that nothing said to her was off the record), her whistle-blowing should break eardrums.
The Wall Street Business Model is FRAUD.
Is, Was, Always Will Be.
Right now every major Wall Street Casino is engaged in massive accounting fraud hiding upwards of several trillion dollars of losses on their balance sheets. The Enron accountants would blush.
Mrs. Warren will be given a desk, phone and computer.
However, they will only function to send messages to Geithner's answering machine and he will promptly delete them.
It's laughable to think for even a moment that any position Obama gives Mrs. Warren wouldn't keep her fully constrained.
Read. The Consumer Financial Protection Board is to focus upon consumer law as it relates to credit cards and small loans. This is what the CFPB and whomever heads it will police. That is the area of EW's expertise and the subjects of her books. The CFPB is not going to police Wall Street or the model (fascism) by which it operates.
According to the Baltimore Sun:
"...This new agency will have the power to regulate a wide range of financial products and services, including credit counseling, payday loans, mortgages, credit cards and other bank products."...
http://tiny.cc/zmz3j
------------------
The mortgages especially have been the main driver of Wall Street corruption for at least the past 15 years. Not only were they securitized to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars but they were insured with swaps valued possibly in excess of $500 TRILLION dollars (but of course were completely unpayable because this amount exceeds the world's GDP by many times).
The casino banks use all these vehicles: loans, mortages, credit cards as capital reserves to be leveraged to the hilt.
To choke off these revenue streams, much of which are attained by fraud and deception, would be the end of gigantic wall street profits.
Obama and Geithner will not allow that to happen.
Constraining Elizabeth Warren and her ambitions is already a done deal.
I guess I missed Elizabeth's book on mortgages. In her televised interviews she never claimed she wants a one-page mortgage. Neither has she claimed that her =passion= is cleaning up Wall Street corruption. This is why I said elsewhere, Americans will expect her to be Donna Corleone, and make financial CEOs wake up in bed next to the bleeding severed head of their race horse. When she cannot make that happen Americans will turn upon her with sick vengeance. Elizabeth Warren would do better never to have come to Washington, not even to see the museums.
Trylon
The great compromiser without a spine does it again. Obama just wants to get out of the way of the just say no party driving that big bus with "Just Say No" on the side.....so he throws the consumer under the bus and he runs to safety....all thanks to the unregulated free market .....to hell with the poor, the destitute, the middle class and people who are not well enough educated to know they should not take payday loans. If they are not smart enough to know better, then screw em.... When I grew up pay loans were unheard of, now there's one on nearly every street corner. And, hey, the banks can borrow money at less than 1% and then loan it out to their credit card customers at 30%. The same banks we saved...they got a hell of a deal.
Warren will report to Giethner....what a laugh. Warren should just say to hell with you Obama! Yea, this is the man that said there would be change we can believe in. Just another lying politician who will be filthy rich when he leaves office. Willl probably go to work at Citi Bank or some other bank he "saved."
Time for a fricken revolution. Obama couldn't stand up to a paper doll without compromising on his position.
Oh, and need I mention that the top 10% of the wealthy hold 90% of the entire wealth of the country (or close to that...I'm too pissed to look it up)? Need I mention that most of that was probably gained by screwing people? Another victory for the repukes--and with corporate control taking over democrats, they are falling in line, too, to do the corporate bidding.
As usual, the far left folks here can't even give Obama one sliver - just one sliver of credit. Warren says she has had many conversations with the President and that they will work together on the agency. They have been friends for years. The White House says she is setting up the agency. Yet, none of you can even bring yourself to say "hey, he did something decent". Immediately, the tone is to spin this as negatively as possible.
You folks are hopeless. It's no wonder the progressive movement is pathetically stalled in this country. People who lean left politically like me are RUNNING from you folks. You wouldn't know progress if it bit you in the face and have absolutely no idea of the reality of politics in this country.
Read Norman Soloman's piece on Common Dreams yesterday. He has it right.
Yea, right. When Warren wants something done, Geithner will gut it and the great compromiser will ok it because he doesn't want to fight for anything or offend Geithner. Obama, the not for change Prez.
Calling us "HOPEless" is a compliment.
I'm assuming you still have your hope?
What's more important to note, however (for those keeping score at home) is that the predictions made in this forum have an unusually high rate of being accurate.
I'd boastfully make the claim that the disgruntled masses of this comment section throw more bullseyes than virtually any other website (that I'm aware of).
"You folks are hopeless. It's no wonder the progressive movement is pathetically stalled in this country. People who lean left politically like me are RUNNING from you folks. You wouldn't know progress if it bit you in the face and have absolutely no idea of the reality of politics in this country."
Which is exactly why I've stop reading CD and other progressive blogs as well as pretty given up on progressive altogether -- the Activist Left has become a bastion of political self-pity and despair. Why bother fighting when all is lost?
When a genuine liberal gets a position of power, the response is that Obama is pulling a bait and switch? WTF? Elizabeth Warren has been a vocal opponent against Wall Street corruption and now she's going to be the financial beat cop. Only in the Bizarro Universe of Common Dreams and Pacifica would this not be considered a victory.
But as usual, the Left simply can't say "Oh Good". Its one snippy cynical comment after another. Its a trick, we've been duped. Whatever.
No wonder Team Obama ignores the Net Roots Left. Obama's no progressive, but he's not the Devil. With 'friends' like this, who needs Republicans?
"...the response is that Obama is pulling a bait and switch? WTF? Elizabeth Warren has been a vocal opponent against Wall Street corruption and now she's going to be the financial beat cop..."
---------------------
You need to reread this article. She is NOT going to be the financial beat cop. She will be setting up the agency. She will NOT head the agency. He pulled a bait and switch.
How many times must Obama run the exact same play before you understand what's happening?
Absolutely not, Setting up the agency is more power than any bureaucrat director that will come and go with the political winds... she sets the standard, the builder.. and when she goes on to something else she will have more to offer from her experience.
This way she has a new mystique which could be a very powerful voice for the people, like Nader's dream and she aint even super rich.
I'm sure that logic would work like magic seeds at the Huffington Post or on the true believers at Daily Kos.
Logic is logic no matter where you find it.
Jim--
This whole affair is a charade by Barry and his corporate pals Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers. After Warren sets up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (sic), the Obama administration will replace her with someone more agreeable to the banksters who run both the Democratic and Republican parties.
It's business as usual. The fix is already in.
Well see.
What is your forecast about...
Would you like to keep the tax break for the middle class?