Elizabeth Warren suggested a consumer protection agency about 3 years ago. It became part of the financial regulation package. She has been pushed to lead the agency but is getting resistance from Dodd. Who will win this.?
Dodd says he would have trouble getting her through because the Repubs would filibuster her. She is highly respected and many think she would be perfect for the job. It has been suggested that Dodd is acting for the industries that would be regulated by her .He has been accused of watering down the financial bill on a steady basis.
Would her not getting the job be a blow against the Dems?
The only criticism of Warren that I’ve heard – and it’s minor – to which I give any credence is that she’s inexperienced in running a large beauracracy like the consumer protection agency (CPA) would be, and thus is potentially going to be ineffective.
My thoughts are: (1) she’s already proven that she has the smarts, honesty, integrity, and appropriate views required for the head of the CPA and (2) that I’d rather have someone with exactly the qualities in (1) to lead the CPA than someone proven to be a fantastic leader but who is lacking even a single one of those qualities.
Fer fuck’s sake – don’t we have enough “fox guarding the henhouse” situations already?
What job will Dodd (caught a couple of years ago taking dodgy sweet deal mortgage deals from Countrywide, one of the firms who created all the toxic mortgages that blew the financial system up) be doing in a year when he retires from the Senate? He’ll be sitting on the board of one or three of the banks/financial firms who are now using him to try and block the appointment of somebody who might eat into their profits and restrict their ability to steal from consumers and the taxpayer (Warren).
Hopefully Obama nominates her and tries to get her appointed. Even if her appointment is prevented by the banking lobbyists the public process will show just whose side the various politicians are on. We already know which side Dodd is on.
Elizabeth Warren is a partisan hack. Republicans should insist she be the head of the agency since she would be so bad at running it, it would do little to hurt the economy. Dodd and Leiberman both oppose her because of Connecticut’s ties to the financial sector. Since Leiberman left the Democrat party he needs more money to campaign, so he will probably delay her nomination to raise money.
OK. So your claim is that Warren is both incompetent and anti-Republican (or, at least, pro-Democrat without reason).
And yet, here you imply that two Democrats (assuming it’s OK to call Leiberman a Dem here, even though he’s declared an independent) are against her because she’d actually interfere with their and the financial sector’s shenanigans?
How does that make any sense at all?
No, they shouldn’t. The best pick for the Republicans would be someone competent, someone who is willing to observe the measures put in place by other countries and identify those that serve the purpose of protecting the public while putting the minimum burden on businesses that are not acting unethically.
When I opened this thread ,i was wondering who would say something as lost as that. I am not surprised. She has presented the financial crisis in simple terms so everyone that can hear and read can understand. She predicted the problems and suggested the solution ling ago. But some still think the rich are entitled to fleecing the middleclass and the poor as a birth right. Who would need protection from bankers ?
America Without a Middle Class | HuffPost Impact Here are some of her writings. She is hated by some because she points out the fact that our economy is destroying the middle class and enriching the few. We have gutted protections so banks can do what they want. She is one of the few economic stars who explains the problem in simple terms and suggests proper methods to fix it.
One of her enemies is Geithner. You can imagine why. She has castigated his pro banking moves since he got in charge.
I’ve liked Warren ever since I saw her on Frontline’s “The Secret History of the Credit Card”.
However, I have my doubts about any government agency whose mission, or at least a significant part of it, is to protect people from their own stupidity.
Big companies like regulations because it protects them from competitors. They would prefer someone they can influence and work together with to protect themselves. Usually these regulations end up hurting the economy.
Warren’s MO is dishonest attacks on big business, so in a position with access to the press she might be a nuisance to them. I don’t care whether she annoys the credit card companies, I only care whether she hurts the economy. Credit card companies don’t care much about the economy, only whether she annoys them.
Big companies fight regulation tooth and nail. The financial companies have been trying to eliminate regulation ,like Glass /Steagal, for decades, until they got it done. The repubs cut regulators over every industry they could when Bush got in. Regulators are what protects the people from lawless corporations.
Warren foretold of the consequences of letting the Bush Libertarians have their way in the economy. How did that work out? Greenspan allowed the banks to have their way because the economy is self correcting and would only do good.
What kind of alternate universe do you live in PUDDLEGUM?
The kind of universe I live in is where big companies pay millions of dollars to lobbyists to help legislatures craft regulations. Where regulatory capture happens almost 100% of the time; where the total number of regulations increased under the Bush administration, where Sarbanes-Oxley was passed, where heads of regulatory agencies retire and go to work for companies they just got done regulating, where there is a revolving door between lobbying companies and government. I live in a world of public choice theory and misaligned incentives exist. In this world Fannie and Freddie had their own dedicated regulatory agency and still blew up the economy. Here, someone tried to alert the SEC of Bernie Madoff’s fraud and was ignored. A world where “Regulators are what protects people from lawless corporations” sounds nice, but is as real as a world where inidan smurf cats fly dragons.
You are absolutely correct about regulation. The only regulations big business oppose are those that would make them compete on a level playing field, and hold them responsible for harm they cause.
However, you don’t mention the grounds for ‘Warren’s MO is dishonest attacks on big business’. Do you have any?
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That might be the best choice for everybody. But I fail to see how fairness and common good are an advantage for any partisan group. Perhaps you could enlighten me.
So eliminating regulation would correct that ? How? regulation is good. It just needs to be free from those who they are regulating. it can be done, but so far, corporations are winning. Warren is a breath of fresh air. Her and Brooksley Born told the politicians would happen if they did not do their jobs. This mess should not have been a shock. But it is correctable.
I know better. The repubs will block anything we try to do to prevent it from happening again. If they fail, they will force it to be water3ed down . It will be a long fight, if we survive. We may not. The economy is still crippled and it may go down a lot farther.
“Regulation is good but it needs to be free from those who they are regulating”?
This is just hopelessly naive. A busines’s survival is dependent on the regulatory agencies. Thus every self interested business man is very interested in the regulators. The regulators are made from the same crooked timber as the rest of humanity. Thus it is inevitable that business and regulators are intertwined.
The only way to correct this is to make regulations simple and encourage competition. Simple regulations reduce the opportunities for discretion and corruption. Competition is what keeps big business from exploiting consumers.
An example is when big toy companies produced toys in China that had been tainted by lead based paint. Congress responds with regulations decreeing that all toy manufacturers have to have third parties test and certify that their products are lead free. For big toy companies this adds a small cost to each of the millions of toys they sell a year. For small toy companies that manufacture in America and never had any problems with lead paint the scandal was a great opportunity to take over market share. However, they have to comply with the regulations too and did not have the sales volume to amortize the cost over. So the money that could have gone into expanding and challenging the big toy companies goes into regulatory compliance instead and in the end the big toy companies benefit from having had lead paint in their toys.
To put it into economic parlance, regulatory compliance is a barrier to entry and the higher the barriers to entry the more monopolistic existing companies can act.
The two examples of Elizabeth Warren’s dishonesty that come quickest to mind is that in her book The Two Income Trap does not mention that housing consumption has gone up 20% in the time she writes about and that increases in taxes during the period account for most of the difference in disposable income. She also wrote a well known study about medical bankruptcies that glossed over the fact that bankruptcies dropped over 90% at one point in time she studied.
The regulations are enacted by legistures which should place the common good ahead of the special interests. Business needs to provide input to the process, when dealing with the specifics, but right now they spend their money on the political effort to brand all regualtions as bad (except the anti-competitive ones that get no air time). No doubt an unachievable ideal, but we could barely get worse, and there is plenty of room to get better.
How? Competition makes businesses vie for sales, and without regulation they will do anything to to increase revenue.
When regulations specify methods, they can become a barrier to entry. But when the regulations concentrate on goals, like no toxic substances allowed in products, and they are equally applied to all, they should enhance competition. If that is what you mean by simplicity, then I would agree. For instance, third party testing could be a way of limiting liability, but the penalty for failure of compliance should be the motivation for compliance. Companies that fail to provide reasonable safeguards should lose their license to compete. Instead, just as with BP, ignoring regulations may be less expensive than the profits obtained.
Sorry, you don’t have enough detail there. An incomplete book does not equate to dishonesty. Can you show that that these are cases that misled instead of fail to inform? I’d like to know if that is the case.
As some point in the future legislators may ignore special interests and big businesses who employ voters and give campaign contributions. When the interests of small businesses and innovators are given equal weight to those of the entrenched and powerful, regulations will become more fair. I suspect this will happen around the same time as monkeys flying out of my butt. In the real world big companies team up with big government to stifle competition. This fantasy of greed disappearing if only the right person were given enough power is childish and ultimately dangerous.
Is that a response to something in particular?