A story in today’s Globe paints a fine picture of how Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown want the Senate race to unfold.
On Sunday, Warren called on Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, to resign from the board of directors of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, after Dimon acknowledged that “we made a terrible, egregious mistake” in dismissing warning signs that preceded the $2 billion loss.
Brown’s campaign held a conference call with reporters … to discuss the controversy surrounding Warren’s claims of Native American heritage.
OK. So Elizabeth Warren wants to talk about banks that are behaving recklessly and the fact that the head of one such bank also sits on the board of the bank’s regulator, namely, the New York Fed. To me, the fact that the head of a big bank sits on the board of an entity that’s supposed to regulate it sounds like a conflict of interest, and sounds like the kind of thing that should be stopped if we want to avoid a replay of 2008. It sounds, in other words, like something that could affect the people of Massachusetts in important ways. Relatedly, Warren has just sent around an email saying:
I’m calling on Congress to put Wall Street reform back on the agenda and to begin by passing a new Glass-Steagall Act. This was the law that stopped investment banks from gambling away people’s life savings for decades — until Wall Street successfully lobbied to have it repealed in 1999…. A new Glass-Steagall would separate high-risk investment banks from more traditional banking. It would allow Wall Street to take risks, but not by dipping into the life savings and retirement accounts of regular people. And by making banks smaller, a new Glass-Steagall could also help put an end to banks that are “too big to fail” — further avoiding costly taxpayer bailouts.
Scott Brown, in contrast, wants to talk about Warren’s Native American heritage. That sounds like … well, it sounds like a waste of time. I cannot imagine any way in which anything about Warren’s heritage could affect the people of this state, or any other.
See, Brown wants this race to be about personalities. He wants people to think that Warren is a bad person, because she’s an elitist, because Hollywood people like her, because of something about her heritage. Whereas he wants people to think he’s a good guy, a jock, a handsome dude with whom you’d like to have a beer. And, because of that, he thinks he should get to be a Senator.
Warren, in contrast, wants the race to be about the stuff that actually affects people’s lives. If the banks crash again, that matters. A lot of people will lose their jobs because of it, just like they did last time. So I’m glad Warren wants to avoid that, and that she has some ideas for how to do it. I’d sure like to hear from Scott Brown what he actually wants to do with a six-year term. Other than the teabagger’s creed that we must “repeal Obamacare” (for reasons that remain obscure), I haven’t heard a damn thing yet.
GO SOX!!11!
and if that’s not enough for you –
GO CELTS!1!!!
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Smartypants Opera-singin’ Librul. Scottie’s got the JUICE.
The appeal of “a good guy, a jock, a handsome dude with whom you’d like to have a beer” sways an awful lot of people.
By contrast, to believe what Elizabeth Warren is saying you have to (1) pay attention and (2) not be dissuaded by FUD campaigning that says “it’s all too complicated to understand” and (3) not believe that, in all cases, “the free market knows best and government screws up”.
The shorthand that she communicates is this: I’m passionate, I’m smart, I’ve got no time for BS, there are urgent problems and let’s get together to fix them.
She’s a perfectly good bearer for her own message, at a variety of information levels. I don’t think she’ll have much trouble cutting through the noise.
Remember that Brown beat Coakley, with not a lot of scrutiny for his own positions. (“I’m a tax cutter, like JFK”??? “Health care reform will be bad for Massachusetts”????? Really?) He’s an energetic campaigner with charms, as you say, but let’s remember that this time he doesn’t get a free ride on many of the very things that made him a winner last time.
I have to say, last Wednesday, when Brown a.) voted against — excuse me, FILIBUSTERED — the Dems plan to keep student interest rates low, b.) called for a “bipartisan” solution (hey Scott, vote for it = instant bipartisanship!), and c.) questioned Warren’s qualifications for her job.
Last week was Brown’s Bonanza of Bupkis. Sad stuff. He’s going to lose.
We should reinstate Glass Steagall. We should overturn the legislation that Bill Clinton pushed and signed into law that eliminated the distinctions between banks, investment banks and insurance companies.
They are radically different businesses that should not be regulated the same way.
A good way to start is to eliminate Deposit Insurance over $10,000. Insurance of deposits for up to $250,000 basically helps only the “rich.” and allows banks to borrow at a rate subsidized by taxpayers.
It is a little like farmers growing corn crops for ethanol subsidized by government grants.
If you can’t run you bank, your farm or your auto company without government payments, you should go bankrupt.
Imagine you’re preparing to buy a house. You need 20% down. They don’t take stocks or bonds — you need a check. Where exactly would you keep this money?
Insuring that money doesn’t just help “the rich” — it helps anyone who might even temporarily need large cash in the bank, and it helps all of us by reducing the chance of a bank run or other banking catastrophe.
P.S. The banks pay premiums for their FDIC insurance coverage. It ain’t free.
10K in the bank is a woefully inadequate nest egg for someone on Social Security.
It seems our local GOP stalwarts have found another FDR triumph to attack. They now attack FDIC, desiring instead to have waves of bank failures sweeping the country. Ah, the good old days of the Great Depression.
Federally-supplied deposit insurance is subsidized and does not reflect the true cost of insuring deposit accounts up to the $250,000 per account limit. Reducing, or eliminating federal deposit insurance might be a good way to re-introduce moral hazard into the banking industry, including it’s customers.
Just because the government wouldn’t provide it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be available. Perhaps it wouldn’t be demanded…how many folks have cash management accounts from Fidelity, Scott Trade, or Schwab? All those money market accounts, and much of the equity in portfolios, are uninsured.
Oh yeah – it’s bullshit. The banks didn’t go all-in on their derivatives shell game because they felt backed up by FDIC, and when they faced their end it wasn’t FDIC that bailed them out. That insurance is not there to prevent the banks losing money on bad investments; it’s there to prevent depositors losing money because of banks’ bad investments.
Banks’ tiered capital ratios notwithstanding, pre- and post-“crisis,” you still throw invectives around without any discussion of why and how, just regulate everything in sight. It’s a progressive reflex. Problem? Regulate.
I’m not advocating deregulation. I’m suggesting that if we remove banking’s taxpayer-supported crutch — this includes Dodd-Frank, Volker (as of yet undefined,) and Carl Levin’s and Liz Warren’s grandstanding — maybe we can come up with well-considered and effective modifications to the banking regs that would promote safety AND growth.
But apparently we can’t even have that discussion here.
And it was deliberately and pointedly missed. Instead, the bill used the financial crisis as an opportunity to enact remedies for zero of the problems that caused the crisis, and various long-standing wishlist remedies that have nothing to do with the crisis.
He’s only a legend in his own mind.
Yeah, repeal Obamacare! And, and, no more taxes on tea! We won’t pay the British government one shilling, not one!
that Beacon Hill is now working on the affordability part of MassHealth. This putz could be pushing for similar reforms in DC instead of trying to get even for being denied his half-court attempt to sink PPACA.
BTW: That pernicious sack of Texas road rage known as Phil Gramm, everybody’s republican uncle:
As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from 1995 through 2000, Gramm was Washington’s most prominent and outspoken champion of financial deregulation. He played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the 1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banks from Wall Street. He also inserted a key provision into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Credit-default swaps took down AIG, which has cost the U.S. $150 billion thus far.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html #ixzz1uwPrxdaB
The House and Senate passage was veto-proof.
Assuming no taxpayer money was put at risk (has JPM re-paid all its TARP?) since when is it a crime to lose money? Apple recently lost $60 billion of market value yet nary a peep. Banks are of course a different case, but the $2 billion loss (even $4 billion) will be absorbed out of shareholders’ value, not out of the the taxpayers’ pockets.
In that regard, Solyndra was more expensive to taxpayers than JPM. Yet progressive will fall on intellectual swords defending the Dept. of Energy’s loan guaranty. Cost: $500 million and 1,100 jobs.
I’d put them at a -10, myself…on a scale of 0-10.
Can you provide any constructive rebuttal? Help get to zero.
It is unfair to expect banks to change their ways given all that’s happened. After all they are playing with their own money, right? Only their shareholders are disappointed. Nothin’ to see here.
If this is true — I’m not saying it is in the case of JPM’s leveraged hedge, we’ll have to see if depositors’ money was at risk — then WTF do you care?
Banks are, and were, highly regulated. Still, blow ups and losses happen all the time. More micro-managing regulation will not solve the problem. Dodd-Frank and Volker worsen the problem. You cannot put the collateralized interest-rate swap genie back into the bottle so let’s move in the direction of a leveraged derivative quarantine.
A good place to start is to prohibit any taxpayer exposure via deposit insurance to banks that do this type of trading. To some extent, this is a return to Glass-Steagal.
Unless I needed to issue millions of dollars of international multi-party letters of credit, I’d gladly remove my accounts from B of A and walk across the street to Cambridge Trust.
On the other hand, I am beginning to question Warren’s honesty about her claim of American Indian heritage.
I know this fails to show up on the progressive radar, but I believe the issue should not, and will not, be dismissed by independents. Is Warren 1/32nd Cherokee? Not proven, according to the New England Historic Genealogical Society.
Even if Warren was only going on “family lore,” she AND Harvard Law School still used it to qualify her as a “minority” hire, and irrespective of her teaching and academic qualifications, using a 1/32nd blood mix as an affirmative action qualifier may really piss off some independent voters. It’s the principal of the thing. Gaming the system.
Furthermore, there’s the question of whether Warren or HLS used her minority status to apply for any state or federal money. One wonders what the rules are. Is 1/32nd sufficient? Must you document your distant relative’s ethnic status, which Warren has not? What constitutes academic fraud vis a vis applying for and receive public funds? Why has Harvard been silent on this and other unanswered questions surrounding the issue?
This is far more important than Brown making a mid-court free throw after 4 attempts. It speaks to Warren’s veracity, transparency, and mindset. I wouldn’t want someone who felt that this is “nothing” representing me in the US Senate. I wouldn’t want Brown representing me if he falsely claimed a higher military rank.
Yahoo’s CEO was quickly fired when the board discovered he’s fudged his resume. Why should Elizabeth Warren be different?
No, no they did not. There is no evidence – zip, zero, zilch, nada – that Harvard even knew about Warren’s heritage, much less that it played any role in their offering her tenure. As I’ve said ’til I’m blue in the face, the first indication of Harvard being aware of it came over a year after she became a full-time faculty member.
No, no there isn’t. The Globe completely debunked this earlier this week. The evidence shows that Warren never “checked a box” relating to minority status in any application for anything. And what HLS itself may or may not have done is of course not Warren’s problem (and, in any event, nobody has found anything like what you’re postulating).
This whole issue is crap. It has nothing to do with “veracity” or “honesty.” It has to do with trying to distract voters with an ugly smear that blows some nasty dog whistles. I don’t like it, and neither should you.
“On the other hand, I am beginning to question Warren’s honesty about her claim of American Indian heritage.”
Of course you are.
… as far as I can tell, for bostonshepherd there’s never been any question, whatsoever, at all. From the get-go, according to his royal BS, she’s been guilty, guilty guilty and this just provides a semi-plausible frame to hang her guilt upon.
and it took me to Legal Insurrection.
You’re joking, right?
…are “BS”
Are you in any way refuting what the NEHGS communicated to Jacobson? That they never claimed or verified Warren’s Cherokee ancestry? That they never found any source document “proving” her 1/32nd bloodline?
When I’m pointed to The Nation, or Huffington Post, I usually like to read the article first before passing judgement.
Not here, of course. Verdict first, trial later.
…is pure bullshit, hence my play on your initials. Distraction and dog whistle, that’s all it is. Have a nice day!
Rather than just ignoring what you don’t want to hear perhaps you have other information to put forth?
I’ve read in multiple places that the NEHGS has backtracked and is no longer claiming the document indicating her native american heritage can be located.
I’d just like to know what is true and what is spin.
they had the original document. And Warren has always said it was “family lore,” AFAIK.
What’s true is that all the available evidence (which includes contemporary documents dug out by the Globe) shows that Warren never relied on her heritage in applying to college, law school, or for a job. It’s also true that Harvard never said anything about her heritage until over a year after they offered her tenure.
I was never of the opinion that the NEHGS claimed they had the document, only that it existed, now I’m reading they are making no comment on the existence of the document.
Scott Thompson was recently fired/resigned as yahoo CEO not because he was unqualified for the position, but because he had claimed something false on his resume. I do not think Ms. Warren is unqualified and haven’t made that assertion. I’m asking if she’s been open and honest about the native american issue. I believe if this were Brown or Romney, BMG would be far more interested and outraged.
You are basing this argument on that Crimson story at the time she was tenured? The one that didn’t mention that she was a minority? But that one did mention that she was a woman. So, would you say that means she “relied on” being a woman? I don’t think that’s a meaningful metric. I think the Crimson and Harvard and Warren just knew that she was a white woman and it would be ridiculous to tout her as a minority when she did not live as or come from that culture at all. But they did later tout her, when the story was not accompanied by her photo, to burnish their image. And they knew they’d be able to do that later, since they knew from the directories that she claimed to be Native American.
Despite the messenger, they seem to say they NEVER vouched for Warren’s American Indian heritage, as reported in the media.
Is Jacobson making up NEHGS’s email response?
llink
There’s your race, right there. We need to hang this around Brown’s neck until November.
Or the possibility of Warren having abused/falsified her American Indian heritage.
Even this statement is now in question:
If they implied that, they’re now backtracking –clarifying — to say only she’d be 1/32nd Cherokee if O.C. Sarah Smith were also Cherokee.
What if Warren cannot prove her American Indian heritage? Will likely voters find this trivial, or only progressives?
The American Indian Globe-spike has gone Drudge. You guys can minimize Drudge & Legal Insurrection all you want, but, to a great extent, Drudge drives a lot of national media coverage. It’s widely read on both sides of the aisle.
I’m happy to minimize Drudge and Legal Insurrection. They, like breitbart.com, are jokes.
the entire country voted for the Massachusetts senators! Brown’s going native does matter after all.
and railing against Wall Street is a losing issue, especially as Obama is so close to WS himself. He’s no FDR in his inauguration address.
Bessides as soon as you start talking banks no one going to understand. What is risk? What is role of the FDIC? How do banks compete globally? How did investment banks end up depository banks? All too complex.
Besides, Brown voted for Dodd-Frank, so there’s no offical difference with Warren.
Right, ’cause Wall Street is so popular. Everybody loves those guys.
An affliction of the affluent, white, middle-aged male victim class.
BTW, Brown voted for Dodd-Frank after he gutted the funding mechanism. But so what – forget the facts, its all about clever electoral politics and media spin, right?
Wall Street is not a losing issue. People are pissed, and they’re ready to blame someone besides (in addition to) government. They don’t have to construe the problem in the complicated terms you’re using. The 1% concept is easy to understand.
Besides, Warren can explain the problem in a few minutes in a debate and it will refresh people’s memories. God knows Brown couldn’t.
I would only add that people are pissed and WANT their government to do something.
Key phrase: want their government.
“Yeah! What David said!”
Does that make it more effective?
I’m just sayin’ that regular folk wonder why if Wall Street is the cause of our problems why wasn’t it fixed, and why didn’t anyone go to jail (as they did in the S&L debacle) for 2008?
Then there’s the President, who can’t stay away from the Wall Street cash: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/16/usa-campaign-idUSL1E8GF99M20120516
If there’s one thing the voters do not like, it’s hypocrites.
and Obama justly shares in the blame for why the Wall Street reform bill wasn’t a better bill. But congressional Republicans’ share is substantially larger.
When Dodd-Frank was written and passed, Dems controlled the House, Senate, and the WH. The Dems own it 101%.
They had a numerical majority, but the GOP has found a way to control the Senate anyway. Even when some said Dems had 60 keep in mind Lieberman was independent and Ben Nelson was DINO of the year.
Wars, depressions,debt, deficits, broken health care -you name it. Not their problem.
The Republicans positively demolished the economy, wiping out the life savings of an enormous number of Americans by destroying the value of their homes.
Not their problem, though.