Elizabeth Warren vs. Wall St.
 

David Ignatius of the WashPost, a savvy writer takes issue with Warren's "war on Wall St."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...c8b_story.html

I was at a holiday party last week and spoke to a friend who retired three years ago as an executive with the Controller of the Currency and is consulting for national banks all over the world from Ireland to Iceland to Bulgaria to Greece to Romania. He's very smart, a dedicated liberal Democrat, but didn't hesitate a minute to offer his view that "that lady is scary," echoing many of the same points made by Ignatius. FWIW, he's a PhD economist who has never worked on Wall St. (and is highly critical of their shenanigans).

I like Ignatius and I've known and have great respect for my CotC friend for nearly twenty years and suspect they may be on to something.

how do you move the masses to the center without a radical dragging them from the fringe?

Warren may be extreme, but maybe that's what it will take to energize the Democratic base and drag the country back towards the center a bit? Sort of in the fashion that the GOP used the Tea Party zealots and other far right lunatics to drag it rightward?

Or will her presence further energize the right and have the opposite effect, as Obamas presidency has done (arguably)?

Dave

Hard to say, but I know I was taken aback by my friend's comments on Warren. He was involved in developing the "stress tests" banks have to periodically undergo and has been deeply involved in fixing banks, here and abroad since the crash and has nothing but contempt for a lot of Wall St. practices. Yet, he insisted that Warren is "dangerous." I may see him again on New Year's Eve and might have to dig a bit deeper.

The Ignatius Op Ed doesn't really say anything, does it?

John

John it does say that Ignatius is disingenuous or has a short memory. Larry Summers who he lauds was one of the trio (Summers, Greenspan & Rubin) that persuaded Clinton to sign Gramm's legislation that repealed Glass Steagall and led to the 2008 debacle. Summers as Treasury Secretary would be a bloody disaster.

Ignatius goes on to say that TARP was a good thing because it bailed out the TBTF banks.

Yet Sheila Bair, Chair of the FDIC and a Republican said the government should have bailed out the homeowners. This would have indirectly bailed out the banks and there would not have been the deepest Recession since 1929.

Senator Warren is simply shining a nice bright light on that revolving door between the Investment banks and Treasury.


TBTF - To Big To Fail (except that now they are even bigger)

Well, there's that. :)

John

Seems to me that Ignatius is taking Warren to task for advancing some of the same rhetoric that I hear on this forum all the time. She's being taken to task by speaking out against a nomination that furthers the incestuous relationship between Wall Street and Washington.

She's currently PO'd about Weiss as Ignatius points out, but at least she's been consistent on the topic. For example:

So when former Congressman Anthony Weiner -- a Democrat from New York -- dismissed my concerns, it was business as usual. Identifying himself as a liberal, Weiner called my criticism of the revolving door culture "overblown" and "petty."

Let's start with some facts.

The Cantor move to Wall Street is not some isolated incident. Just look at the influence of one mega-bank -- Citigroup -- on our government. Starting with former Citigroup CEO Robert Rubin, three of the last four Treasury secretaries under Democratic presidents held high-paying jobs at Citigroup either before or after serving at Treasury -- and the fourth was offered, but declined, Citigroup's CEO position. Directors of the National Economic Council and Office of Management and Budget, the current Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve and the U.S. trade representative, also pulled in millions from Citigroup.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizab...b_5835682.html

Ignatius doesn't like Warren rhetoric because in the process he thinks she's dissing Obama's record:

Has Warren apologized for getting this wrong or conceded that the financial recovery program engineered by Geithner, Summers and then-Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke was a success? Not to my knowledge. But in the process, she disowns a Democratic president’s historic achievement.

He goes as far as suggesting that Warren is rhetoric is nothing more than neo-populism. That suggests that Ignatius regards Warren as someone who would, as a populist/political opportunist, trash sound economic policy for the sake of advancing her political career and agenda. Maybe that's what Finn's friend is concerned about as well.

^^^^ But was it sound economic policy? From the banks point of view probably, from the homeowners who took the royal screwing not so much. I like Sheila Bair's approach better.