Sunday, October 12, 2014

A hit and a miss from Senator Elizabeth Warren

I'd seriously like to support Senator Elizabeth Warren. Perhaps it would help if she didn't do things like agree to be interviewed by Thomas Frank. This is the guy who - even when he knows he's is going to be interviewing its creator - gets confused about the name of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) because all his mind seems capable of comprehending is the "betrayal" of Obama/Holder for not prosecuting enough banks. So you know right away where this interview is going to go.

Initially, Senator Warren makes a very important point when it comes to things like the CFPB.
...the consumer agency is structural change. So basically, the premise behind it was that there were plenty of federal laws out there, but no agency would step up and enforce them...

And so the idea behind the consumer agency was to say: structural change. We need an agency that has one and only one goal, and that is to look out for American families. To level the playing field, to make sure that people are not getting tricked and trapped on these financial instruments. And so it was a big shift, and it’s a shift worth thinking about.
But then when Frank presses her about the lack of Wall Street prosecutions, she says something that is remarkably ignorant.
They [the Obama administration] protected Wall Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. Not young people who were struggling to get an education. And it happened over and over and over.
I honestly believe that Senator Warren is a smart person. So I have no idea why she would say something like that. Did she not notice that President Obama implemented other structural changes to financial institutions via Dodd/Frank that most of Wall Street hates? Even naysayers like Paul Krugman have had to acknowledge that it has been more effective than they originally thought.

Did Senator Warren not notice the structural changes to student loans that President Obama got passed back in 2010? Or the fact that he endorsed her bill that includes further reforms?

And how about the structural changes Obamacare has made to the number one reason Americans file for bankruptcy - medical bills?

The one thing the Obama administration didn't do was pillory banks and financial institutions during a time when the country was careening towards a second great depression. That should result in one big "Duh!" from anyone with a modicum of intelligence.

I'm growing increasingly weary of this notion that in order to be one of the "kewl kids," one must ignorantly criticize President Obama. Senator Warren would get my unqualified support if she would abandon that nonsense.

7 comments:

  1. I agree with you Nancy. There seems to be a concerted effort to demonize this President by the ones that actually wrote the damned laws and he signed. Makes you kind of wonder what country do these people want to live in. sigh

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  2. I'm starting to suspect that the Democrats who are now turning on the President are doing it in part to start currying favor with the Clintons. They think Hillary will be the nominee for president and want to have clout with her. The same holds true with the people in the media who once adored Obama and have turned on him. They also want to have access to Hillary. Both are also doing it because attacking the President is now in vogue. Whatever the case may be, it's all shameful and disheartening.

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  3. Warren also had to educate Thomas Franks on the history of bankruptcy "reform" and what a bad deal it was for consumers. After he found out it was passed in 2005, he lost interest in it for some reason...

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    1. IOW, for folks like Franks, what good is information if it doesn't feed your Obama Derangement Syndrome?

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  4. i sure hope those "working class whites" love hillary a whole lot more than i think they do....

    (shrug) but that's her concern not mine.

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  5. When I hear anyone place all of the blame for a particular problem on a president, I wonder if they understand how our federal government operates. It cost democrats a lot of political capital to pass Dodd/Frank and to get the CFPB up and running. Republicans fought them every step of the way. Sen. Warren was not in the senate when these fights took place. She was on the outside looking in. No American president is granted the powers of a dictator by the Constitution, and I'm sick and tired of Americans pretending that it does. Every policy any president wants has to become law has to be approved by both houses of Congress, and Sen. Warren needs to remember this. Even after Dodd/Frank became law and the CFPB began operating, the republicans in Congress, some Wall Streeters, and others are still trying to weaken/repeal Dodd/Frank and eliminate the CFPB by filing lawsuits against this administration. What they can't accomplish in Congress, they're trying to accomplish in our corrupt federal court system by relying on republican federal judges to substitute law and precedent with their political ideology. I hate simplistic ways of looking at complex issues/situations. If President Obama had tried to go after the big banks in 2009, it would have derailed his plan to pass Dodd/Frank, healthcare reform, end DADT, etc., because the republicans would have latched onto it and would have made a huge stink about it, making it difficult to get anything else done.

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