Elizabeth Warren Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel interview with Charlie Rose

[Emit]

For those who missed it, Charlie Rose interviewed Warren last Thursday, March 4, 2010. Here's an excerpt.

CHARLIE ROSE: Elizabeth Warren is here. She is the chair of the
Congressional Oversight Panel. That committee has a broad mandate the
monitor the federal bank bailout and review measures created to prevent a
future economic crisis.

Its latest report focused on the threat from losses in the commercial
real estate market. Legislation circulating in Congress this week suggests
that financial reform could be coming. At the center of those discussions,
the debate on the powers of a new consumer protection agency and where it
might be located. ...

~snip~

CHARLIE ROSE: Tell me what you think about this debate about a
consumer protection agency. You have a House bill which made an
independent agency, came out of the House Financial Services Committee.
Now you have Dodd and Corker, the two, Democrat and Republican, suggesting
some compromise they may have reached which would put it inside the Federal
Reserve. What says Professor Warren?

ELIZABETH WARREN: Here’s the deal. Right now, the Fed has the power
actually to do a lot of this. The Office of the Controller of the
Currency, which is the federal bank regulator, has the power to do a lot of
what this agency would do. But the truth is they don’t want to do it.
They’re not interested in it. It’s not what they do.

~snip~


ELIZABETH WARREN: ... There’s nobody in Washington who is focused on the economics of the family, who is focused on these consumer products.

CHARLIE ROSE: This is credit cards?

ELIZABETH WARREN: Credit cards, mortgages, car loans, check overdraft
fees. This is all the stuff that you have to do in your daily life to
survive economically.

And what’s happened is this is an industry where the business model
itself has fundamentally changed. ...

CHARLIE ROSE: So nobody was looking after the consumer.

ELIZABETH WARREN: Nobody was looking after the consumer, and, indeed,
what happened is credit card companies put the customers in their
crosshairs and made big, big money.

~snip~

CHARLIE ROSE: I hear you as saying that the mindset of the people
making the economic decisions in Washington, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner,
Christina Romer, and others, they look at the world through the wrong
experience. You might want to include Christine not in that, but certainly
Summers and Geithner.

Do you think their experience has been too connected to the point of
view that does not allow them to make the optimal decision? I tried to
make that as easy as I could.

ELIZABETH WARREN: I think we have different worldviews.

CHARLIE ROSE: You and them?

ELIZABETH WARREN: Yes. I just don’t think we see the world the same
way.

CHARLIE ROSE: And so therefore they shouldn’t be in place.

ELIZABETH WARREN: Well, I’m going to say it differently. I think
that Summers and Geithner are smart. I think they’re honorable. I think
they approach the economy and the world through the largest institutions.
And they see the world from a top-down perspective.

I spent 25 years somewhere else.

CHARLIE ROSE: Academia?

ELIZABETH WARREN: No, come on. Summers and I started in the same
place.

(LAUGHTER)

CHARLIE ROSE: I know.

ELIZABETH WARREN: I’ve spent my time and my research on economic
death and rebirth. And much of that was about what happened to America’s
middle class, how we have hollowed out America’s middle class. It will not
save us if a handful of Wall Street banks prosper and the rest of America
fails.

Our focus, our energy, our heart has to be on the rest of America.

Transcript: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10895#frame_top
Video: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10895

[BanzaiBonnie]

1. I thought there was some sort of oversight being conducted

of Charlie Rose. Whew! Charlie Rose is not in trouble.

[Emit]

2. lol

I changed it for clarity, thanks.