The big banks loathe Ms. Warren, who has made a career out of pointing out all the ways they gouge financial consumers – and whose primary goal is to make such gouging more difficult. So, naturally, the Republicans loathe her too. That she might someday run this bureau terrifies the banks. So, naturally, it terrifies the Republicans.
The banks and their Congressional allies have another, more recent gripe. Rather than waiting until July to start helping financial consumers, Ms. Warren has been trying to help them now. Can you believe the nerve of that woman?
LOL
To listen to the House Republicans, you’d think the financial crisis of 2008 was like that infamous season of the long-running soap opera “Dallas,” the one that turned out to be a season-long dream. Subprime mortgages? Too-big-to-fail banks? Unregulated derivatives? No problem! With the exception of their bête noire, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Republicans act as if nothing needs to be done to prevent another crisis. Indeed, they act as if the crisis never happened….
It’s not just the House Republicans either. Already the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has reverted to form, becoming once again a captive of the banks it is supposed to regulate. (It has strenuously opposed the efforts of the A.G.’s to penalize the banks and reform the mortgage modification process, for instance.) The banks themselves act as if they have a God-given right to the profit they made precrisis, and owe the country nothing for the trouble they’ve put us all through. The Justice Department has essentially given up trying to make anyone accountable for the crisis.
Thank goodness, then, for the attorneys general – and for Ms. Warren. On Main Street, where the attorneys general operate, it is pretty obvious that problems persist. During the subprime boom, many states tried to stop the worst lending abuses, only to be blocked by federal banking regulators. Now that the country is dealing with the aftermath of those abuses – the rising tide of defaults and foreclosures – it is the attorneys general who are, once again, put in the position of trying to stamp out abuses, this time of the foreclosure process itself.
And as for the point of the hearing, which was apparently for Republicans to beat up on Warren:
The notion that Ms. Warren lacks statutory authority to talk to the attorneys general is an objection so silly it is hard to take seriously. Consulting with the only government officials around who are actually trying to do something for financial consumers is precisely what she ought to be doing. Given that her agency could wind up enforcing the terms, it’s practically a necessity.
As for the idea the Republicans have been spreading talk that the attorneys general are overstepping their bounds by trying to force reform – and a big penalty – on the mortgage servicers, that’s pretty silly, too. As Adam Levitin, a Georgetown law professor, has pointed out on his blog recently, settlements are private agreements between two parties. The banks can accept what the A.G.’s are proposing. Or they negotiate different terms. Or they can reject them outright, and go to court to fight over the proper remedy. It’s really not any different from the multistate tobacco settlement of some years ago, which imposed some minor reforms on the tobacco industry along with a giant financial penalty. Congress had nothing to do with it.
Really, these people are either idiots, or in Wall Street’s pockets to a truly embarrassing extent, or both.
As much as I would love to have Warren run for Senate, I doubt it will happen, and I think there’s a better use of her obvious talents. Obama should nominate her to head the consumer protection agency. Of course, she will be filibustered and will never be confirmed. But, as Nocera points out,
even if her nomination goes down in flames, Senate confirmation hearings would be clarifying. Americans would get to hear Ms. Warren explain why the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has the potential to help Americans. And they would get to hear Republicans explain why the status quo – including the everyday horror of the foreclosure mess – is just fine.
That would supply a lot of very useful footage for 2012, among other things. And then Obama can name her to the job in a recess appointment. A year or so will be plenty of time for her to leave the agency in excellent shape, whereupon she can turn over its leadership to someone who is confirmable and go back to being a law prof. Win-win.
First of all, I like Elizabeth Warren. But I’d rather have her out there advocating than tied to a desk.
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p>But here are my issues with her getting the job.
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p>1. What qualifies her to run a massive agency?
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p>2. The precedent is sheer poison. The agency was her idea; therefore she should run it. That will come back to haunt us brutally. The Roaming Death Squads were John Bolton III’s idea. He should run them!
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p>All in all, just not my cause.
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p>Relatedly, you are apparently concerned about her management skills. All she needs to do is be smart about who she brings in as her top deputies, and that will not be a problem.
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p>Finally, you say you want her “out there advocating.” The top job at that agency is, by far, the best place for her to be as an advocate. Guaranteed national media whenever she wants it; guaranteed access to the president and SecTreas; and the ability to put her ideas into effect quickly. She doesn’t get any of that at Harvard Law.
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p>2. That’s not the precedent. The precedent is: she is the person who best understands the issues facing the agency, therefore, she should run it. I can live with that. The fact that it was her idea is nice, but isn’t really the point.
Especially on this
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p>
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p>I want her to get this right and get it done well, and there is not enough time for her to do that and then mount a successful campaign. For her to lead this agency, lead Consumer Protection, and maybe lead a big regulatory agency after that, and then come back here to run for something would be awesome. But we have other credible candidates to take on Brown but she is the one credible figure to take on Wall Street so lets keep her where she is.
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p>That’s only true if the agency succeeds. If it fails under her control, then there is no one left with the expertise and moral authority to say that.
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p>You also seem to have adopted a figurehead view of leadership. I think it’s the rare organization that runs like that. Big museums, maybe, and sports teams.
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Best to put the person who has the vision and is willing to work hardest for it.
…do you think Warren is a greater asset to progressive politics in her current role, or as a candidate in an uphill–but winnable–campaign for US Senate against Brown. BTW, we’ve had this conversation before.
on every occasion that this has come up, my first choice is for her to run the consumer protection agency; obviously that depends on Obama being willing to nominate her. If that comes via a recess appointment, that’s fine, as long as she would get at least a year out of it. My second choice is that she runs for Senate. But she should not accept the nomination unless Obama agreed that she’d get the recess appointment in the event of a filibuster.
I agree with your preference, as Warren has worked for much of her career on consumer issues.
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p>I am concerned that Obama may be under pressure by his Wall Street friends to not nominate her because they are afraid she will be effective. It will be interesting to see if Obama does the right thing this time. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him drag his feet, give her half-hearted support, and then nominate a different “compromise” candidate who can be guaranteed to do whatever the banks want. If I were placing a bet, I’d bet on him fighting for Warren the way he fought for the public option. I’d love to be wrong.
has led some in the GOP toward rethinking the idea of her as head of the new agency. She’d have a good shot at beating Brown, and then they’d have to deal with her voice in the Senate. If enough folks in the GOP decide not to filibuster her, I think she could do more good as head of that agency than as a Senator… but otherwise, I’d encourage her to think more about the race.
When asked in interviews about running for political office, she has peppered in witty retorts, but I have heard the wince in Warren’s replies. I sense she would consider it were the climate not represented by such a mire of uncooperative, overinflated egos.
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p>The bigger opportunity here is to visualize her efforts as a shield between Wall St. and consumers, and bring THAT image to the campaign trail, every single day, until November 2012. And, while doing so, press the GOP to explain why consumers do NOT need an agency to rally and police on their behalf, which greatly contributed to this debacle in the first place.
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I wish more people would make such points. It reminded me a little bit of the Kagan hearings. They never even intended to block Kagan, but they wanted to make speeches about their issue of the week, the memory of which I lost, I am glad to say.
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…is this
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p>This White House maddeningly does NOT seem to welcome opportunities, no matter how easy, to call out the opposition and fight for what is right.
But the problem, I would say, is that the president has enough to do with Paul Krugman artifically creating new goals for him, and then lamenting the “missed opportunity.” That is snatching defeat from the air.
I would have thought advocating hard, in one’s first few weeks on the job, for a stimulus big enough to improve the unemployment picture and actually TRYING to draw a distinction between himself and the GOP on Wall Street abuses would be pretty obvious political “goals” for Obama. Now it turns out they were just Krugman-erected straw men?
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p>How about the last paragraph of the Nocera article: “It has been much noted in recent months that President Obama seems unwilling to start a fight with Republicans. Maybe that’s why he has shied away from nominating Ms. Warren to a job for which she is so clearly suited. But if protecting financial consumers – and helping the millions of Americans struggling to hold onto their homes – isn’t worth fighting for, then what is?”
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p>Is Nocera also artifically creating goals Obama just can’t reach?
… that that is not, even remotely, what I said (since I was referring to this Krugman column and one specific agenda item Krugman created all on his own) —
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p>The answer to your question is yes. “It has been much noted” — by who, Joe? Someone noteworthy enough to merit mention in your column apparently, but anonymously. Doesn’t the NYT have a policy that discourages anonymous sources?
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p>I’m tired of it, fenway. If the Red Sox — to use your metaphor — led the division but the pitching staff was only second in ERA, anyone citing that would be recognized as a fool. But in politics, we perpetually create new goals — never mind that the old battles rage on, and that new, real goals are created all the time. I don’t give a fig about “the conversation” about regulations. Dodd-Frank passed. The Consumer Financial Protection Agency was created. I’ll take those real victories over some George Lakoff (sp?) scorecard any day of the week.
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So did health “reform” – whoopdeedo.
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p>One of many pieces of legislation watered down before it even hit the hopper. I really would be OK with compromise if it came later, but we’ll lose any fight we don’t at least try to engage.
Dodd-Frank is actually a decent piece of legislation in many respects. Most of it (including the consumer protection agency) hasn’t kicked in yet – that’s why it hasn’t had much impact yet. The Wall St. Journal hates it. Good enough for me.
The Wall Street Journal and the GOP will oppose, reflexively, anything Obama does, no matter how much he tries to conciliate them by making it toothless. Sometimes I think Democrats have never heard of an Overton window. Stake your position as far to the right as possible and, when the Democrats don’t do the same on the left, you’ve just succesfully moved the debate rightward. Just because the Wall Street Journal claims to hate it shouldn’t be good enough for any of us.
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p>It’s not, really. But it does help.
It has been “much noted” by me and by a good number of people I talk with. This guy does not fight for anything. Last I saw Obama he was blathering about “tough choices” and deficit reduction.
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p>The GOP, which singlehandedly created at least 2/3 of the current national debt, became obsessed with the deficit on January 20, 2009. Our T-bills are still selling at super-low interest rates, suggesting that the deficit is more of a long-term than a short-term problem. If you have any concern with the short-term or long-term fiscal picture, an obvious solution is to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire. Even these higher rates on people with TAXABLE income over $250,000 (thus, in many cases, pre-deduction income over $350,000) are lower than the top rate in all but three periods: 1924-29, 1986-93, and 2001-10. All those periods have in common overconcentration of income at the top, a speculation bubble bursting and significant economic contraction.
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p>At what point did Obama and the Dems really make the case for this? It seems to me the Obama team put more effort into defending AIG bonuses than into defending the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. By their actions they have become equal partners with the GOP in the Wall Street bailout mess. People who blame Wall Street for the economic crisis voted 57-41 for REPUBLICANS in 2010. That’s political malpractice by the Dems.
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p>By what metric, then, is Obama “leading the division”? Dodd-Frank is a perfect example of the Obama-Rahm school of administering. Offer a weak bill, let it get watered down even more, then hold a signing ceremony celebrating that you passed “reform.” It doesn’t restore Glass-Steagall, it doesn’t regulate bank size, capital requirements or leverage, it doesn’t limit credit-default swaps, it doesn’t police the ratings agencies, the “Volcker Rule” in the bill has a 3% speculation loophole big enough to drive an armored car through, it doesn’t limit credit card interest, ARMs or payday loans. Watered-down CFPA. And it preempts state laws that do address important consumer protection issues. Dodd’s a Wall Street hack and Frank, my rep, not much better this time around.
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p>Many strong Obama supporters from 2008 wanted serious reform, and reversal of the 40 years of Milton Friedman economics. A real realignment and reawakening of progressive thought in America. Other people who don’t follow the issues closely just wanted unemployment to go back to 6 or 7 percent. Both groups are disillusioned when they see record profits, Wall Street back to business as usual and still-high unemployment.
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p>Insufficient and poorly explained stimulus + insufficient and poorly explained health care bill + insufficient and poorly explained financial regulation bill + continuation of Bush-era TARP policies + failure to take fight to GOP = little progress on unemployment, disillusioned former Obama supporters and independents and massive GOP gains in 2010. Now Obama’s only looking to cooperate with Republicans MORE. Good luck with that.
Since we began this by talking about Paul Krugman, you are aware that he endorsed the healthcare bill?
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p>Krugman also endorsed Dodd-Frank.
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p>I appreciate your idealism, fenway. But stuff has to be done. That’s … progress.
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but I’m really not talking about idealism. Obama came in with the GOP brand in tatters and a country hoping he’d do something to fix it. It was a great opportunity to improve the nation and bury the GOP for a generation, and he’s blown it badly. Handing the House back to the GOP in only one election cycle is hardly progress.
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p>Had Obama pointed a finger right at the GOP and dared them to filibuster a stimulus bill sufficiently robust to improve the unemployment picture, he’d have gotten it through. He could have mobilized his staff and voters to harass Snowe, Collins and Specter until some GOP Senator blinked and gave him the 60th vote. He only needed ONE Republican. Had that happened and unemployment gone down quickly, and had Obama clearly positioned himself as against Wall Street abuse rather than taking his economic team straight from Bob Rubin’s kaffeeklatch, I doubt the GOP would have won much of anything in 2010. And we probably would not have Scott Brown in DC.
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p>This is a pattern. It seems automatic, when there’s a choice to be made between the DLC wing and Progressive Caucus wing, you will find the admnistration on the DLC side of the question. My view is that it’s horrible policy at a time when our country needed the change and hope the guy ran on, and it’s also lousy politics. And I really can’t stand it when the guy starts lecturing his own base about how he “never said” this or that, when they can see for themselves that he did say it thanks to a simple YouTube search.
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p>We can debate the various bills he’s gotten through. Krugman ultimately concluded the healthcare bill’s benefits outweighed its flaws (which he repeatedly acknowledged). I’m not sure I agree. There’s good stuff in that bill, but it’s of little use to the average uninsured person if there’s also an individual mandate without any public option or meaningful cost control measures. Premiums already have gone up and the subsidies are woefully inadequate. A family making $90,000 in Boston is too wealthy-they’ll have to pay the whole thing out of pocket or pay a fine. In these times of “iscal austerity” I doubt those subsidies will be improved any time soon.
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p>Essentially the bill gives the same private insurers responsible for this mess millions of new customers, many of them unwilling. So maybe it’s great that a company can’t deny you a policy based on a pre-existing condition, but if you still can’t afford the policy it’s not that much help. For those who still can’t afford the premiums, the penalty amounts to a tax hike with no corresponding benefit, just like we’ve got in Mass. And this at a time when he’s colluding to extend historically low tax rates for the most affluent 2 percent.
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p>As for Dodd-Frank, Krugman was outspoken in identifying its flaws. BTW, the link was to the other Dodd-Frank bill, the 9/2008 bill creating TARP–Krugman said the bill was a big improvement over Paulson’s original 3-page bill (aka the “Give me the keys to the vault and complete discretion” bill). As I recall, Krugman was highly critical of the Dodd-Frank reform bill because it proscribes very little; it leaves most of the work to regulators. How strong will that regulation be in the next GOP administration?
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p>With Obama I don’t think I’m making the perfect the enemy of the good. I think, politically and economically, his policies simply have not been good.
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p>I think on the stimulus, on health care reform, on the auto restructuring, on tax cuts, he did the best he could. The Democratic Party has serious work to do to undo the efforts of a generation of conservative leadership that made us renounce our historic commitments to get elected. There is no popular hunger, at least outside of the blue states, for a return to the policies of LBJ and FDR liberalism, none whatsoever. I think there is a hunger though for a return to Kennedy style liberalism that emphasizes empowering local communities and putting money back in working peoples pockets. Obama blew it on Wall Street reform in my opinion, since there was an easy argument to make that the GOP were the fat cats and reform was the only way to stop them from wrecking American capitalism with their greed. The bailouts were unpopular because they were morally wrong, how is it morally justifiable to reward people for bad behavior? The GOP made a compelling argument in 2010 it was not, and the bailout more than any other issue, gave rise to the backlash with Obama. Yet instead of pointing out that the GOP was the coziest party with the Wall Street set, how their solutions would cause more ‘too big to fail’ banking schemes, how if they were morally wrong why didn’t the GOP want to punish the bad guys and protect working peoples investments. Instead there was not even a chirp from the White House, and it was shocked it lost white working people so drastically.
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p>Part of the problem is Plouffe’s strategy and the DLC. Its assuming everywhere is the Tech Belt of North Carolina-young, educated, urban, pro-business whites and minorities coming together for a progressive cause. Yet that’s no strategy to defending Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania or Iowa and those states go red IMO if the GOP runs even a remotely credible candidate.
I know they were always centrist, but there was a time I liked them better, at least when I identified them with Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton was pretty much a disaster. A key reason I wanted an alternative to Hillary in 2007-08 was that I didn’t want Clintonomics-Rubinomics Part II. We got it anyway.
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p>DLC, Third Way, whatever, they’re not what I want the Democratic Party to be. They think they need to be this way to win elections, but I truly believe it’s actually been costing them elections. I agree 100% with jconway that the party’s not doing much to hold states like Michigan and Ohio. I’m sort-of young (36), educated and urban, but I am in no way pro-business. I think it’s indicative of the way the Democratic Party has lost its way on economic issues, perhaps largely due to campaign finance issues, that we have a Democratic Party that does better in Wellesley than in Waltham or South Boston. The party would do much better if it really stood for lunchpail issues.
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p>As for an appetite for FDR-style liberalism, that’s the kind of thing a strong leader with good communication skills can create. The GOP didn’t say, in the 1970’s, that there was no appetite for Hayek-style economics. They said, ad nauseam, “the other guys have done it their way for a while and they’ve made a mess of it. What we need instead is THIS.” And 2009 was the perfect time to make that case forcefully. Frankly, when Obama talked about his admiration for Reagan I had believed (perhaps wishful thinking) that he meant he admired Reagan’s ability to communicate with the public in a way that changed the conversation. And I thought he could make the case by reiterating a few key points. That guy went into hibernation, though.
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p>I’ll never believe he couldn’t have done better with the stimulus. First, don’t call it a stimulus. It’s too technocratic, which is a major flaw of this administration in terms of public communications. The name is recovery and reinvestment, so call it RECOVERY. Explain over and over that the other guys made a mess, and THIS is the amount needed to jump start the economy. Tell people you can’t be penny-wise, pound-foolish. When the roof has a huge hole in it, you have to fix the roof. You can’t ignore it to save a few bucks. And, for the love of God, call these hypocrites out loud and clear the first time they start bleating about deficits. Thanks to their tax cuts, Bush and the GOP Congress added nine figures to the national debt EVERY SINGLE YEAR. And now they oppose a bill to fix what they broke? Bring it on.
But I had problems with Bill Clinton too. And Obama knew we did, and explicitly said we could do better.
I distinctly remember the longest sustained economic growth and relative peace. O yeah, Bill Clinton WON two terms as POTUS and beat back an impeachment effort, becoming the first Democrat since FDR to do so. I’d call Bill Clinton a rousing success on both politics and policy.
I don’t call NAFTA, WTO, telecommunications deregulation, AEDPA, DOMA, the welfare bill and the elimination of Glass Steagall (specifically orchestrated by Clinton’s Treasury Secretary so that Citigroup could be formed and he could go make millions working for it) a success on any agenda I can support.
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p>Income inequality grew as much, if not more, during the Clinton years as during the GOP presidents who bookended him, as most of the new jobs created during those years were low-wage service jobs. Clinton’s DLC (recently dissolved but living on in reality as the New Democrat Coalition) is clearly pro-big business and there is no doubt Clinton was a conservative Democrat. Alan Greenspan called him the “best Republican president we’ve had in a while.” Clinton is to 1968-2008 what Eisenhower was to 1933-1968: a president from the party that generally did not control the White House or the agenda during his era, who went along with a slightly diluted version of the other party’s basic ideology.
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p>The guy managed to depress labor turnout enough to hand the House to the GOP for the first time in 40 years, along with the Senate. He himself won two terms largely thanks to Ross Perot. He never topped 50 percent. The impeachment thing I don’t understand. Clinton was the ONLY Democrat since Andrew Johnson to beat back an impeachment effort because nobody tried to impeach any other President (Nixon they would have, but he stepped down). In any event Clinton did not win election after beating back the impeachment, which was a gross overreach by the Republicans.
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p>I hoped, due to the historical significance of the 2008 crash and the cratering of Bush’s/GOP’s reputation, Obama would be the president I’d wanted Clinton to be. Like Clinton, he’s not even close.
…not a fan of DOMA, and don’t know enough about the rest to comment (including what AEDPA even stands for). What I do see is inflation down, unemployment down, stock market up, job creation up. GOP lost seats every year after their initial takeover, including in 1998, unusual for a midterm and I saw plenty of polls suggesting Clinton would have won without Perot. BTW, I also agree with Clinton’s 1992 primary opponent Paul Tsongas who said you cannot be pro-jobs and anti-business. We do need to rein in corporate excesses, but most regular businesses should be supported and incentivised to create jobs in ways consistent with our values.
U3 unemployment may have been down under Clinton, but people were working more hours and more jobs to make ends meet. The jobs created were either low-wage service or high tech. For many Americans, the high-end jobs were not an option. And do you not recall the massive corporate layoffs of the mid-90’s? My dad, and half his friends, lost their jobs in this miraculous Clinton economy and never got back to where they were. Time ran a cover story at the time: Boom for Whom? And we’ve certainly learned the stock market up is not always good. Sometimes it’s a bubble. A tech bubble under Clinton, a financial bubble under Bush.
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p>I don’t agree that, in 1992, Clinton was a lock without Perot. Even though Clinton benefited from negative perceptions of the economy, the perceived aloofness of GHWB and a demoralized GOP base, and he only got 43% of the vote. Self-described moderate and liberal Republicans were 15% of the electorate. 30% of the liberal Republicans and 21% of the moderate Republicans voted for Perot. Clinton took 11 of the 17 states decided by fewer than 5 points, including big EV states like Ohio, NJ, Ga., Tenn., Wisc., which alone totaled 71 EV. More important than the numbers is the fact that, without Perot, the campaign’s tone would have been very different.
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p>I am not “anti-business” or “anti-job,” but the pendulum has swung very, very far toward big business in the past 40 years. We are, most definitely, creeping back to 1900, with a full assist from the Democratic Party. I find it stunning how many Democrats have no problem with free trade even when it expressly excludes worker protections. NAFTA created an ever-larger trade deficit with Mexico and killed union manufacturing jobs. It didn’t even help Mexico much; the abuses of the maquiladora zone are legendary.
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p>Many upscale New Democrats hold their noses at unions. I think unions are like schools. You can look at them and point to things that are foolish, or wasteful or wrong, but if you eliminate all of them you’ll have a picture you won’t like very much. The GOP, with little to no
resistance from the modern Democratic party, has essentially done that for private sector unionism and is now turning to the public sector. It’s a sad day when Ross Perot is a better defender of union jobs in the US than the Democratic Party.
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p>AEDPA is the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. It curtails habeas corpus protection and prohibits reviewing even a death penalty case with evidence of actual innocence if the prisoner’s already had a day in court. Civil liberties lawyers loathe it. Aother Clinton-Dick Morris reelection special.
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p>As for welfare reform, here’s its more recent legacy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04…
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p>I’m really glad we put Goldman and Citigroup right back where they were while these people figure out how to get food.
Or so I think I read recently. Harold Ford was the last man standing, and he sat.
…Paul Krugman would be chairing Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors.
Considering this is an administration that led the greatest banking reform since the New Deal, most successful health care reform since Medicare, ran the most successful foreign policy since Eisenhower’s, and saved millions of jobs through the auto restructuring, its really surprising they don’t bother to run on these achievements. You never hear about Wall Street Reform, you never hear about how the auto bailouts saved millions of real jobs in America’s heartland and America’s industrial infrastructure while leaving Joe Taxpayer with interest and profit on his investment. I am sadly afraid that this administration, so full of Ivy educated success stories in corporate and public sector America, has very little experience relating to working America and it is its greatest vulnerability. I’d have gone left-populist day one the Tea Party showed up, instead we keep fighting on their terms. You want no more bank bailouts, government’s not the problem, the greedy banks are, lets stop them from being reckless. You want to save money during this recession? Lets cut 100 billion from the deficit by reforming healthcare and putting money in American’s pockets and cutting their taxes as well. I have heard not a chirp. Clinton’s crowd should remind them that its the economy stupid and to run to voters hopes and aspirations about better times and what you’re doing to solve problems.