President Acting Like We Expect Him To

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THE President's decision to sidestep the obstructionists in the Senate and self-appoint Wall Street critic Elizabeth Warren is just the type of proactive, aggressive move by the WH that many critics in our party have been looking for.

Banking and financial special interests have been loading their guns in anticipation of any move by the President to sent her nomination to the Senate for approval. The prospect of that effort succeeding was almost zero in the face of the unprecedented republican obstruction on Pres. Obama's nominees by this Congress.

The President's attitude was, 'you don't want her regulating your financial activities? Too bad. I'm hiring her anyway as a 'special adviser to the Consumer Protection Agency'."

What's she going to actually do there? It's still not clear, but Elizabeth Warren says she's confident that she'll be given the 'tools' by the President to manage her new responsibilities effectively. Here's a look at how she views her new job from her blog post today at the WH: (http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/09/17/fighting-protect-consumers)

Fighting to Protect Consumers

Posted by Elizabeth Warren on September 17, 2010 at 06:00 AM EDT

Over the past several weeks, the President and I have had extensive conversations about the vital importance of consumer financial protection.

The President asked me, and I enthusiastically agreed, to serve as an Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He has also asked me to take on the job to get the new CFPB started—right now. The President and I are committed to the same vision on CFPB, and I am confident that I will have the tools I need to get the job done.

President Obama understands the importance of leveling the playing field again for families and creating protections that work not just for the wealthy or connected, but for every American. The new consumer bureau is based on a pretty simple idea: people ought to be able to read their credit card and mortgage contracts and know the deal. They shouldn’t learn about an unfair rule or practice only when it bites them—way too late for them to do anything about it. The new law creates a chance to put a tough cop on the beat and provide real accountability and oversight of the consumer credit market. The time for hiding tricks and traps in the fine print is over. This new bureau is based on the simple idea that if the playing field is level and families can see what’s going on, they will have better tools to make better choices.

If the CFPB can succeed at leveling the playing field, we can go a long way toward repairing a gaping hole in the budgets of millions of families. But nobody has ever thought or argued that the consumer bureau can fix everything. Lost jobs, stagnant incomes, rising costs for college, dwindling retirement savings—there’s a lot of work to be done.

When she was 16, my grandmother, Hannie Reed, drove a wagon in the Oklahoma land rush. Her mother had died, so she was up front with her little brothers and sisters bouncing around in the back. When I was growing up, she talked about life on the prairie, about marrying my grandfather and making a living building one-room schoolhouses, about getting wiped out in the Great Depression. She was hit with hard challenges throughout her life, but the moral of her stories was always the same: she would solve her problems one at a time by pulling up her socks and getting to work.

It’s time for all of us to pull up our socks and get to work.

Sounds promising.

[Smashcut]

1. This is a good move by Obama and I'm looking forward to seeing

what Warren will do.

Credit where credit is due, from a critic of the administration.

[MadHound]

2. If it is indeed a move to put teeth into this new commission,

And expedite regulation of Wall St., it will be a great move and I will applaud Obama for it. But out of longstanding cynicism when it comes to all politicians, I'm expecting that this simply another way to take an intelligent, committed reformer and swaddling them in some much bureaucracy that they are rendered ineffective and inert.

We'll see.

[jdlh8894]

5. Where in the Constitution

does it give the Govt. the right to control Free Enterprise?
Inquiring minds would like to know!

[MadHound]

12. Ah, so you're one of those

One who believes in completely unregulated capitalism. No regulations for food safety, air travel safety, environmental preservation or financial regulation. Sorry, but such libertarian philosophy has been proven bankrupt time and again.

As far as the Constitution goes, well, I suggest that you check out Article 1, Section 8, the part about Congress being able "To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;"

Perhaps if you had paid more attention in high school?:shrug:

[Radical Activist]

3. It's amazing to see some progressives become gullible dupes of the pundits

as long as they attack Obama from the left. Unfortunately, liberal and center-left pundits are sometimes full of shit too. You can't turn off your BS Detector just because a writer usually agrees with your view.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. So you are saying he would have done this anyway without any

pressure from the left?

If so, why the hell has he not done the same over the past year and a half?

This is the first time since he's been in office that he has advanced a progressive position without the right telling him when to start the process.

And about bucking time, too.

[Radical Activist]

6. lol wow

No, that isn't what I was saying. I was speaking in more general terms about a trend. Obama has advanced progressive positions consistently since the day he took office. Much of the "pressure" from pundits has consisted of speculation about positions he never held. Should pundits get credit for pushing Obama left when all he did was dispel false rumors that he had ever moved right?
The unsourced rumors that he was going to reverse his position on repealing tax cuts for the wealthy comes to mind. A few posters here were congratulating themselves for "pressuring" Obama on tax cuts when in fact, Obama was merely clearing up the misleading rumors that those same posters had helped spread. His position never changed.
I think Obama would have picked a strong consumer advocate without any pressure from the left and it might have been Warren. I'm not sure why the net meme is that only Warren can do the job.

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. And why would Obama have picked a "strong consumer advocate"

after staffing his economic team entirely from Goldman Sachs?

How is giving the banksters a get out of jail free card any way indicative of looking out for the public interests?

The fact is, Obama has done damn little that is progressive, and a shit load that is center right. Protecting the banksters, protecting the insurance companies, bailing out the car companies (good thing) without requiring any restructuring to avoid the same damn thing happening again in three years (bad thing).

The so-called crackdown on Wall Street started with half-measures and got watered down from there. Where is this 'progressivism' you're talking about?

[Radical Activist]

8. Exaggeration and slogans don't do anything for me.

No, he did not staff "his economic team entirely from Goldman Sachs." I think you know that's not true. A lot of pundits will say Obama isn't doing enough no matter what he does. I prefer to look at the facts of what's happening instead of repeating knee-jerk Green Party slogans.

[RaleighNCDUer]

9. You've got nothing but exaggerations and slogans.

Yeah, I know "his economic team entirely from Goldman Sachs" is a slight exaggeration - ONE of them never worked for Goldman Sachs. None are progressive. All represent the mainstream capitalist Wall Street thinking that created this mess. Prove me wrong.

What Wall Street looters are facing prison today? Are the insurance companies, now that they have their mandated purchase as law, NOT raising premiums? Since locking in employer-provided insurance as the ONLY option, are we not seeing more people lose their insurance as unemployment increases? Sure, they CAN purchase their own at market rates - so now the unemployed with no income can get insurance that they have to pay five times as much for.

THIS is progressive?

ON EDIT: you apparently know as little about the definition of 'progressive' as you do of 'radical' and 'activist'.

[Radical Activist]

10. Is there a new consumer financial protection agency?

Are there new limits on many fees banks use to rip people off?
Has the mortgage industry been re-regulated?
Has Wall Street?
Have credit cards?
Has Obama made larger investments in clean energy than Clinton and Carter did in 12 years combined?
Did he save tens of thousands of teacher jobs?
Has he created millions of jobs with public works projects?
Did he propose a plan with the public option and spend months trying to get the Senate on board?

Yes to all of the above.
It's very easy to dismiss anything with a cheap one-liner about it not being enough because Obama didn't overthrow the capitalist system and throw the CEO's in jail. And yes, it's a shame that the Senate roadblock is there watering down everything. But the regulations that have passed make a difference in the lives of real human beings. That's progressive. I prefer progress over posturing. And you're still exaggerating about the economic team.

[librechik]

11. I only want to know if she has subpoena power

And I don't know that answer yet, although I have to assume from the announcement that the answer is "no." Even though she says she believes she has all the tools she needs. I hope there is a giant sized nutcracker in that toolbox.