Thursday, February 14, 2013

Sen. Elizabeth Warren off to a good start

The Democrats had the good sense to put newly elected Senator Elizabeth Warren on the Banking Committee.   In her first day in hearings with heads of the financial regulatory commissions (FDIC, SEC, Fed. Reserve, Treasury Dept.), she asked a simple question that they couldn't answer.

 "When was the last time you took a Wall Street bank to trial?"    They explained that they don't have to go to court, because they negotiate some settlement, consent order, penalty, etc.

But she was persistent.  ""I appreciate that you say you don't have to bring them to trial. My question is, when did you bring them to trial?"

Then she made the point of her question:
"There are district attorneys and United States attorneys out there every day squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial in order to make an example, as they put it. I'm really concerned that 'too big to fail' has become 'too big for trial.'" 
They will rue the day they blocked her appointment to head the new Consumers Financial Protection Bureau.   She would then be one of the regulators.  Instead she is a senator on the committee that over-sees the regulators.

What delicious irony !!!

Ralph

1 comment:

  1. The video clip of Elizabeth Warren's question at the hearing has gone viral on the internet. She made her point so vividly: "too big to fail has become too big for trial."

    In the senate for less than a month, and already she has made her mark.

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