Elizabeth Warren for Fed Chief!

[sixmile]

"Only in America do people save to go bankrupt" -from Maxed Out, 2005

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-warren/america-without-a-middle_b_377829.html
'Can you imagine an America without a strong middle class? If you can, would it still be America as we know it?

Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can't make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street.'

snip

“Today’s business model is about making money through tricks and traps.”-Warren, from congressional hearing June, 2009

Honesty.
Independence.
Intelligence.
Elizabeth Warren for Fed Chief!

[DebbieCDC]

1. K&R

[HCE SuiGeneris]

2. A hale yes to that!

:kick:

[jgraz]

3. Fuck that.

Warren/Krugman 2012

:D

[loudsue]

5. LOL! Don't forget Eliot Spitzer!

Another brilliant

BRILLIANT

hero of mine!

[JackRiddler]

4. Warren for Fed Chief? If only!

She could start by printing a mere $2 trillion to retire the debt of all 50 states and allow them to spend freely, establish their own state banks, and end the Depression.

While we're at it, Michael Hudson for Treasury.

Howard Dean for Chief of Staff. Or HHS. Or Veep.

Move the DNC to St. Louis and spend on winning the "red" states.

Can a fellow dream?

Spitzer for Attorney General, or (given his recent reputation problems) perhaps he'd start out best as the head of an SEC with 10 times the budget. That should keep him busy issuing indictments for the next seven years.

Seize the ratings agencies as domestic enemies and make them sing until at least 500 top Wall Street executives are behind bars.

RFK Jr. for EPA.

Kucinich for Secretary of Defense. Oh, all right: Col. Anthony Shaeffer.

The otherwise dubious Ron Paul would make a great Undersecretary in Charge of Closing Overseas Bases.

Liquidate the CIA and its contractors.

Pull out from the WTO and throw a few billion into the UN and the ICC.

Prosecute Cheney and his gang for originating wars of aggression.

Noam Chomsky for Secretary of State. Okay, he's an Anarchist, right? So how about Chalmers Johnson? Impeccable conservative credentials. Kevin Phillips?!

Oh well.

Because I'm afraid Warren running the Fed is about as likely as any of the above.

[sixmile]

6. A long journey begins with a small step!

Nice list

[izquierdista]

11. Riddler for President

With picks like that, you should be at the top of the ticket!

[JackRiddler]

15. Don't tempt me!

Every day I think things like, is there anyone who could run in the primary against Obama with the announced intent of losing (since it's hopeless), but of taking a few hundred delegates to the Convention and forcing real policy concessions?

Better yet, I'll borrow Norman Mailer's words, from his opening to "Advertisements for Myself":

Like many another vain, empty, and bullying body of our time, I have been running for President these last ten years in the privacy of my mind, and it occurs to me that I am less close now than when I began. Defeat has left my nature divided, my sense of timing is eccentric, and I contain within myself the bitter exhaustions of an old man, and the cocky arguments of a bright boy. So I am everything but my proper age of thirty-six, and anger has brought me to the edge of the brutal. In sitting down to write a sermon for this collection, I find arrogance in much of my mood. It cannot be helped. The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a perception that will settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of our time.

PS - Thanks! :blush:

[polichick]

7. I'd love that, but the free ride would be over and politicians don't want that. nt

[jgraz]

8. Imagine if we'd actually elected a HOPE and CHANGE president

Fed Chief Elizabeth Warren

Sec. Treas. Paul Krugman

Sec. H.H.S. Howard Dean

A.G. Elliot Spitzer

Sec. Def. Max Cleland

Sec. Env. Al Gore (in the new Department of the Environment)

Sec. Ag. Jim Hightower

Sec. Peace Dennis Kucinich


Almost makes you want to cry :cry:

[HCE SuiGeneris]

10. What could be...

with an informed and empowered populace. It is good to know that there still are some leaders out there that deserve our respect.

[philly_bob]

9. REC +16: Warren yeh! /nt

[JDPriestly]

12. Elizabeth Warren gets along well with people but is honest.

She also understands balance sheets. That's what we need at the Fed. Not yet another old boy member of the old boys club like Bernanke.

Interestingly, we need more women in the top positions in the Obama administration. It is the only way to change the well established D.C. pattern of appointing friends of friends.

D.C. is like a Mafia.

Here is how it worked in Sicily of yesteryear (and America of today).

"Power has many sources. The first and nearest source is one's family. In Sicily the family includes relatives as far as the third, fourth, or fifth degree, collaterals, in-laws, relatives of the in-laws, godfathers and godmothers, best men at marriage, dependents, hangers-on, servants, and vassals. They all help or must be helped, as the case may be, in times of necessity. The power of the family is increased by the conquest of new vassals, by new alliances, association with other powerful families (some marriages are decided for strictly political reasons, as among corporations, political parties), and, above all, by the capture of the gratitude and loyalty of influential friends.

"One can cultivate both humble vassals and influential friends by doing them favors. One poor man needs a good (or a better) job, another a permit to carry fire-arms, the son of a third wants to pass his exams or be let off from military service, a fourth may be in need of a little loan; an official always wants a promotion, a professional man needs clients, a land-owner wants protection from cattle-thieves, a politician wants many votes on election day. They all welcome help. Influential men can, and often do, belong to the official establishment like policemen, judges, prefects, cabinet ministers, deputati (the State being considered by Sicilians as little more than the biggest Mafia of them all.)

"The island is therefore an intricate web of favors done in exchange for other favors among men of all classes, from the humblest to the highest. It is, however, indispensable for anybody who wants to survive never to over-estimate his actual power, to gauge the power of all his possible opponents with the utmost precision, in order to occupy in society exactly the place he can actually defend with it, and to pursue only the aims he can presumably achieve. Disasters of all kinds can result from a miscalculation."

Luigi Barzini, From Caesar to the Mafia published in 1971

Plus ca change, plus ca reste la meme chose. (accents omitted, sorry.) The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Teddy Roosevelt introduced the civil service because, after the Gilded Age and the rise of an unimaginably wealthy class in the United States, our republican/democratic form of government was endangered by corruption and nepotism. Successive administrations have circumvented the civil service act by contracting work out. Shame on them.

Today we have the brother of Rahm Emmanuel somehow involved in the planning of our healthcare policy, etc. How long until the civil service is just a footnote in the history books. Government contracts are just another way of rewarding friends and punishing dissenters.

[OHdem10]

13. What is her background?

[sixmile]

14. Harvard Professor

from her wiki page:

'Warren was born and raised in Oklahoma, where she was a state champion debater. She graduated from the University of Houston with a B.S. in 1970 and received her J.D. in 1976 from Rutgers Law—Newark, where she served as an Editor to the Rutgers Law Review.
Warren appeared in the documentary film Maxed Out in 2006, has appeared several times on Dr. Phil to talk about money and families, has been a guest on the Daily Show, is interviewed frequently on cable news networks, and appears in Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story.
From 2005-2008, Warren and her law students wrote a blog called Warren Reports, part of Josh Marshall's TPMCafe.
Warren is married to Bruce Mann, a legal historian and law professor also at Harvard Law School. She has a daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, with whom she has coauthored two books and several articles, and a son, Alexander Warren.
She joined Harvard Law School in 1992 as the Robert Braucher Visiting Professor of Commercial Law. Prior to Harvard, she was the William A. Schnader Professor of Commercial Law at University of Pennsylvania School of Law and also taught at the University of Texas School of Law, University of Houston Law Center, University of Michigan and Rutgers Law School.'

more at link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren

[FarCenter]

16. A lawyer with no clue about global finance

Just what we need at the fed ...

[Lorien]

20. You prefer the former failed CEO of Citigroup who drove that company

and our economy into the toilet? Because that's who they are attempting to confirm right now.

Warren has answers, and answers are what we need.

[rhett o rick]

21. Where oh where did you get that information? nt

[Hydra]

22. Warren was the leader of the TARP oversight committee

She is totally qualified for the job of Fed chairman...except that she would actually do the job and nail people for the gamesplaying they've done.

[Joe Chi Minh]

17. That would be something, wouldn't it!

[Triana]

18. I'm afraid we're stuck with Bernanke. Elizabeth doesn't have a penis to keep her brain in

...has a woman ever been in that position? I keep thinking about what they did to Brooklsey Born who warned of this economic catastrophe before it happened - and they told her to shutup or lose her job - and that SHE was the problem.

Turns out SHE was right and THEY were THE problem.

[G_j]

19. agreed!

nt

[Sebastian Doyle]

23. NOBODY for Fed Chief

Abolish the whole criminal operation. And put Warren in charge of the Treasury.