Republican Nightmare: Putting Elizabeth Warren to Work NowSimon Johnson - MIT Professor and co-author of 13 Bankers
Posted: September 9, 2010 10:31 PM
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President Obama is finally looking for bold, creative and clever ways to change the way the US economy operates -- preferably with measures that will take effect by the November midterms and change the tone of the broader political debate. His tax proposals this week have some symbolic value, but in the broader sense all of these fiscal suggestions are tinkering at the margins.
What could he possibly do that would grab people's attention, mobilize his political base and put his opponents on the defensive? There is an easy answer: Appoint Elizabeth Warren to start running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) immediately.
And the brilliant part of this idea -- as explained by Shahien Nasiripour at the Huffington Post (see also David Dayen's Thursday coverage) -- is that the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation allows the person charged with setting up this new agency to be an outright appointment, rather than a nomination subject to Senate confirmation.
Warren's credentials are impeccable -- she came up with the original idea for the CFPB, she pushed effectively for it to become legislation and she has proved most effective in her oversight role as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. And her manifesto for the CFPB is sensible and actually pro-business -- although she naturally opposes the specific ways in which big banks mistreat people.
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More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-johnson/appoint-elizabeth-warren_b_711537.html:kick:
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