Former regulator, savings & loan investigator, and current Braintruster at the Roosevelt Institute William K. Black says that if Elizabeth Warren isn't appointed to head the consumer protection agency passed as part of the financial reform bill, it will be a clear sign that the agency isn't going to protect consumers at all. While Warren has done the research in the field for 20 years, he notes, other candidates preferred by Treasury Secretary Geithner have fallen more into the Rubin/Summers camp of deregulators.
Black joins us via Skype from Kansas City, where he's professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, to break down the problems with the financial reform bill and make the case for Warren as the only way for real consumer protection.
Mr. President Obama sir, I hope you are listening to people with their feet on the ground still.
There is a poison pill put in this reform bill by your republican enemies. They are hoping you do not notice. It is like a cluster of toxic “assets” designed to go bad at point of creation, and they want you to approach like one of the “fully qualified” buyers at one of the Pension funds, who were likely misguided and bought one. … To their peril or peril of the economy overall.
If you sign this bill and put the Fed in charge of consumer protection, all scorn for the Fed will be transferred to you. Do you not see this is your friends at Peterson Institute or one of the other Dodd-backed think-tanks, trying to sabotage your Presidency? They are paying for its inclusion hoping you do not catch on due to you being a first termer. And when you sign, it … They will all be watching on their televisions and home theaters, saying “bye bye.”
All your enemies want you to be hoodwinked. They will think it is a marvelous feather in their cap they put that in front of you and like a bag of bolts, you walked right up and signed your own one term limit.
If you sign it, i will be saying the same thing… Sayoonara
It is a trick Mr. Obama.
The Fed has no business being a consumer protection agency. They have already shown their hand during a crisis. It is the color of AIG money. That should be enough for you to take them out of any “consumer protection” roll.
If the AIG tip-off is not enough reason for you Mr. President, here are several more reasons: They care more for bank executives than the other 99 percent. They defy perfectly good Federal Court Orders¹ to make disclosure (require people to go through Court to get info, and after a considerable amount of effort, then still withhold it for perverse amounts of time). They do not uphold Standing Law² and instead ridicule it and provide model of flaunting the law (substantial executive-level mistake). They fuss over new regulation when the old laws were sufficient.² They failed to adequately stop flow of dividends at large banks during a time of impending economic peril. This action could have been done suddenly and with dramatic flare to call upon shareholders to judge executives, instead of calling in the American Consumer to judge bank executives; while knowing many American Consumers do not have a voting rights over executives, and therefore have no clout (goes to potential mockery of the working class).
Let Facts be known in a candid world Sir. Hope you’re still in touch.
¹ http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a7CC61ZsieV4
¹ http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a0iqF4X4hNCg
² http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/06/obamas-regulatory-proposals-smarter-or-just-more/#comment-184398
By Bruer on July 21st, 2010 at 6:05 pm