Elizabeth Warren has a post up at the White House website:
Over the past several weeks, the President and I have had extensive conversations about the vital importance of consumer financial protection.
The President asked me, and I enthusiastically agreed, to serve as an Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He has also asked me to take on the job to get the new CFPB started—right now. The President and I are committed to the same vision on CFPB, and I am confident that I will have the tools I need to get the job done.
President Obama understands the importance of leveling the playing field again for families and creating protections that work not just for the wealthy or connected, but for every American. The new consumer bureau is based on a pretty simple idea: people ought to be able to read their credit card and mortgage contracts and know the deal. They shouldn’t learn about an unfair rule or practice only when it bites them—way too late for them to do anything about it. The new law creates a chance to put a tough cop on the beat and provide real accountability and oversight of the consumer credit market. The time for hiding tricks and traps in the fine print is over. This new bureau is based on the simple idea that if the playing field is level and families can see what’s going on, they will have better tools to make better choices.
If the CFPB can succeed at leveling the playing field, we can go a long way toward repairing a gaping hole in the budgets of millions of families. But nobody has ever thought or argued that the consumer bureau can fix everything. Lost jobs, stagnant incomes, rising costs for college, dwindling retirement savings—there’s a lot of work to be done.
When she was 16, my grandmother, Hannie Reed, drove a wagon in the Oklahoma land rush. Her mother had died, so she was up front with her little brothers and sisters bouncing around in the back. When I was growing up, she talked about life on the prairie, about marrying my grandfather and making a living building one-room schoolhouses, about getting wiped out in the Great Depression. She was hit with hard challenges throughout her life, but the moral of her stories was always the same: she would solve her problems one at a time by pulling up her socks and getting to work.
It’s time for all of us to pull up our socks and get to work.
If you think about it, this is almost like getting a substantial tax cut. Just cutting out some of the myriad ways that credit-issuers rip us off is going to save almost all of us a significant amount of money over our lifetimes. By empowering us to make more informed decisions, we also stand to save and earn significant amounts of money.
All good. what an amazing story about her grandmother!
I’ll be a cynical bastard and wonder aloud here how long it will take for her to get so frustrated and Rahm’s and Axlerod’s double-dealing that she follows Van Jones and Christina Romer.
I’m gratified the WH went with Warren—she is the obvious best choice for the position. What concerns me is whether she’ll have any power to create and enforce regulation, or if she’s being brought in to placate the DFH’s clamouring for her placement, with an eye to hiding her in the broom closet afterwards.
Let’s see what develops….
You will be cynical all right. Haven’t even given Warren one full day before speculating how she’s going to be shivved by evil Rahm & Co. Christ.
If you think Rahm has the same priorities as you .. you are nuts .. he’s a corporatist .. he doesn’t give a damn what happens to the middle class
In this case, the political Rahm will win out over the corporatist Rahm. Financial reform and especially the CFPB are the most popular of the major things that Obama has gotten passed.
Reflexive responses don’t always capture the reality.
What? You think she won’t?
It’s all about power in a royal court. She’s a new threat. Watch and listen. betcha.
AG
Unlike Jones and Romer, Warren has actually succeeded in driving her agenda through Congress–not that she acted alone. In that, she has shown that she can throw elbows with the best of them. And in this case, the politics and consequently Axelrod and Emmanuel are on her side. The CFPB is the part of the finance reform bill that most folks understand and it is wildly popular, even among Republicans (excepting those on Wall Street).
She is in the position of saying to the worker bees drafting the structure and regulations for the CFPB, “The White House wants….” If Bernanke or Geithner disagree, they can take the specifics of that disagreement to the President.
When the structure and draft regulations are designed, she can supervise their implementation and report back to the President. Without having to get into personnel and task management decisions. And she gets major input into the selection of the administrator of the CFPB. And the freedom not to be burdened with budgets, personnel decisions, and the nitty-gritty that goes with being an administrator. And then she can go back to Harvard–or be named to the Board of Governors of the Fed.
I think that this will turn out to be one of the better played decisions that Obama has made. It seems to have shut up Dodd, except for the grumble “I want to know when the President will send me a nomination.” To which the answer is that he won’t be sending Dodd a nomination because Dodd will not be in the Senate in January. He will be sending it to Tim Johnson (or Jack Reed if Johnson gets a more desirable committee) or to Richard Shelby.
I really like the assumption that Warren is going to lose against Democrats who are blocking her.
If you really think that, then why would you bother to support her nomination in the first place? If she can’t stand up to corporatist Dems and succeed how the hell do you think she’s going to stand up to Republicans and succeed? How the hell do you think she’s going to be effective at all in her role if she can’t win battles against Rahm Emmanuel and Tim Geithner?
I thought part of the reason that everyone was hopped up for Warren’s nomination was because she had a history of successes in this sort of shit. Was that not it? Were people hopped up for her nomination for some other reason that I don’t understand?
I swear, it’s like the woman’s actual abilities to do her job are completely discounted because her “enemies” are just too damn powerful or something. From what I’ve read she can handle the politics, and if she can’t then she probably isn’t the right person for the job.
Wow. You are making more sense than Alan Keyes. A lot more.
It’s not so much a assumption that she’ll lose, it’s that if she’s successful, the current Powers-that-be may perceive her to be a threat to their little feifdoms to be eliminated, or she’ll be shoveled more and more shit until the adage ‘everybody rises to their level of incompetence’ comes into play.
I just want to see her get into the job, and be seen by all as doing it excellently well, keeping to her charter and not being made to go beyond. Basically, the Progressive Creed: Competent Government done Competently
That may be, but you nonetheless preemptively slammed her as being politically incompetent. With friends like you….
Agreed, Justadood. Great that Obama finally got the job.
We don’t have to be sold on Elizabeth Warren or her suitability for it. We have to be convinced that Obama-Rahm-Geithner-Summers really want her as a “fierce advocate” of consumer rights. Remember that Obama used to call himself that on gay rights and then look at his record.
Two problems here: 1) the timing of this appointment and 2) what it means. Regarding timing, it is significant that Obama waited more than two months after signing the bill (which created the bureau) to appoint Warren DESPITE public outcries (and political ones too) for her appointment. Obama waited until the “tea leaves” of primaries had finished and they showed his party as having a disaster coming up in November. ONLY THEN, did he do anything, and he only appointed her as interim director.
Regarding the second point, it relates to how effective Warren can be in D.C. and working with Geithner, Summers, Rahm and Obama a group of people who definitely are NOT progressives. So this is less a hallelujah moment for progressives than Obama finally seeing that a huge wave of discontent amongst voters exists and that he needs to excite his own base to PROTECT HIMSELF. Obama finally came to the realization that the Democratic party loses big time in November if he doesn’t attempt to revitalize the party and this is a step to do that. It’s more politics than it has to do with creating an effective consumer affairs bureau.
Let’s all hope and pray that Elizabeth Warren can still overcome all of the obstacles and do her job for the people.
But I very much doubt that Obama has had a conversion to progressivism. This is a stopgap measure by Obama to protect his own butt. I suspect he will be quite willing to throw Elizabeth Warren under the bus after the elections when she is no longer needed.
Above post should be “It’s great that Warren finally got the job and Obama got into the picture.”
Boo:
Is Warren scheduled for the Sunday bobblehead shows this weekend? If not, why not?
The White House does not do the scheduling for the Sunday bobblehead shows. No doubt should one or more ask Warren would be available. My guess is that the media will try to have a blackout on any news about the CFPB.
OOOOoooo…that’s cold.
Probably true as well.
But…if the media are going to preserve the safety and survival of the republic by combatting the extremist right, then they will find themselves between a rock and a hard place.
Any news that gets potential right-leaning voters…many of whom are undoubtedly in debt up to their ears, just as are most Americans…to move toward the Dems is big news right now.
We shall see…
AG
I am so pleased when you accuse me of being cyncical, AG.
There was no intent to “accuse you of being cynical” in that post, Tarheel.
Sorry to disappoint.
It appeared to me to be a perfectly rational, neutrally considered decision based on the observation of decades of corporate media dissing directed at anything or anybody whatsoever that might in any possible way oppose the corporations’ hegemony over the minds and bank accounts of the hypnomediated sheeple.
On the other hand, I am quite happy to be accused of being optimistic.
Because…I am.
I still believe in evolution.
I still believe that “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” as Martin Luther King Jr. so eloquently said.
And I still believe that the segment of that evolutionary arc that has sustained the US for so long is not over.
We shall see.
Soon enough.
We shall certainly see by 2012.
Bet on it.
AG
Ah, but whom do you bring in for ‘balance’?
You almost never see a freak show without a few freaks, and any freak show run along those lines wouldn’t make money.
Jamie Diamond
The White House does not do the scheduling for the Sunday bobblehead shows.
You are right. However, are they going to turn doing Obama if he says he wants to go on? Do they really think people want to hear from Karl Rove, Holy Joe and John McCain all the time?
Clinton, Bill and Powell on Meet the Press
Clinton, (again) and O’Donnell on Face the Nation
Don’t know about This Week
I have to admit, as much as I am happy to hear this good news I am also a little cynical.
That Elizabeth Warren was able to get the kind of public recognition she has just for being an outspoken financial regulations nerd shows how aware people are that big banks are ripping us off. People cheer like mad when she goes on the Daily Show, and that’s amazing. That she will be anywhere in the West Wing is wonderful.
The CPBA is on a good beat, of course, and she is the best choice to build it. I am very happy for this. But the problem is much bigger than credit cards and mortgages. We have a vast and widening chasm between the financial institutions that are supposed to serve us and the entire rest of the country. This is a chasm of wealth, power and influence, of course, but the most important difference is in terms of goals.
Once upon a time the financial world was invested in the real economy, and saw the safest and surest path to growth through growing businesses and jobs. Over time this has shifted. At first we saw jobs moved overseas, then we saw the rise of the service sector. These are awful enough in themselves, but today the banks and investment houses are interested in making as much money as they can through financial products alone. This draws money out of the real economy, actively hurting job growth, even in convenience stores and Wal-Marts. It competes against real investment by businesses. If I am at IBM, for example, and I need to make a return on a business investment, I need to consider how much I will make minus the cost. If I can make as much through investing with less/no cost, then I just need to see if I am going to slip in my market position by not increasing RAM production, or whatever. But the thing is that because the outlook for growth in the real economy is so grim, there is less and less reason for people to worry about the competition growing at their expense while their money is growing in a diversified bond portfolio. And the financial services industry loves this. All of that money that would get spent on workers who would buy real goods is just loss to them, or at best a very inefficient way to grow an asset.
This is the gaping chasm that needs to be addressed, and I don’t know if all the Elizabeth Warrens in the world can make a difference. Sacking Geithner, Summers and Bernanke would be a start, but the reality is that the “vampire squids” would fight back. This is their economy now, and President Obama did not drive the hard bargain while he had a chance.
I don’t think we’re doomed, I just think we need massive federal spending on a direct employment program to rebuild our infrastructure, and without it, it’s going to be another 10 years at least of really low GDP growth, and what growth there is will be driven almost entirely by the financial services industry. Until the bond market finally drops, and then we’re really in it.
Shorter version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llIQUqfljr0
Good post Chimneyswift that points out the economic dimensions of the problems we face.
There are also the political dimensions. I have long called for Warren’s appointment so this, even though not an outright appointment, is welcome. At the same time, progressives must realize that Obama did this only some two months after he signed the financial bill creating the agency. He waited a long time, long after loud and outspoken cries for Warren to be appointed. Why? If he really believed in her and the mission to be accomplished, wouldn’t he have appointed her immediately? Instead, politician Obama waited to see if he could avert the political disaster that is coming up in November without giving much away. Note the timing of this: just days after the last primary elections which with polls showing a worsening situation for Democrats by the week.
This was a political move by Obama and not a move he really believes in. Obama is not a “fierce advocate” for anything but himself. He needs liberals and progressives to energize the Democratic base otherwise he faces a Republican House, endless investigations, and likely calls for impeachment.
Note too that Elizabeth Warren will be penned in by Geithner, Summers, Rahm and Obama himself, so they are hoping that she will be more of a symbol than a reality bringing change. But I think she is smarter and more media savvy than they are and that she will make a difference in spite of the hostility in D.C. and in the administration (Chris Dodd clearly was speaking for Rahm and Obama just as Max Baucus did on health “insurance reform”).
Don’t be deceived into thinking that Obama and Rahm have become progressives: they need progressives’ votes, money, and organization time and skills. That’s all. Obama is not and never has been a progressive and he has shown time and again to be hostile to progressive ideas and receptive to neo Republican ones. Just look at the “cat food commission” which he created all by himself by executive order and which he stacked with people hostile to social security.