Early alert surfaces on a potential head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

[seafan]

Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher has alerted on a name that's circulating around the Hill as a contender for the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

It's not good news.



By Jane Hamsher
November 8, 2010 7:31 am

In what has to be one of the most morally and politically bankrupt ideas of all time, Ben White says the White House is considering someone for head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and surprise! It’s not Elizabeth Warren. It’s…Melissa Bean:

Buzz on Friday had Rep. Melissa Bean (D-Ill.) possibly getting tapped as the first Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head depending on the outcome of her too-close-to-call reelection race, in which Republican Joe Walsh maintained a slight lead as of Sunday afternoon. But a possible Bean nomination is not sitting well with reformers on the left who say the moderate Illinois congresswoman is far too close to the banking industry. Said one administration official: “It’s not clear she would be acceptable to the reformers.”

.....

What the country has declared is that it prefers jobs, it doesn’t like the fact that the government is giving all their tax dollars to banks, and it consistently votes against the party in power if it isn’t standing up to the banks.

.....

Sebastian Jones, Pro Publica:

Many of those who lost come from conservative districts and are members of the Blue Dog Coalition, another conservative House coalition, but other New Democrats also fared poorly. Vice chair Melissa Bean, a critical player in the group’s efforts to weaken the overhaul of the financial services industry, is trailing a Tea Party-backed opponent in her suburban Chicago district.…Of those who blamed the banks, a solid majority voted against the Democrats, suggesting that despite having passed financial reform legislation, the party couldn’t shake off the notion it was too close to the banks.

.....

* FACT: Audit the Fed, one of the key provisions of the financial reform bill, was something both liberals AND conservatives fought for, and was supported by 80% of the public. Only 9% opposed it. Bean voted AGAINST Audit the Fed.

* FACT: Melissa Bean and the New Democrats were able to shoot the House derivatives plan full of holes.

.....

* FACT: Melissa Bean introduced an amendment to gut a House bill to limit bonuses for TARP recipients. It passed.

.....

* FACT: Melissa Bean “earned the most support of any incumbent from the US Chamber of Commerce,” per a Sunlight Foundation study of how the US Chamber of Commerce used former government officials as part of their lobbying team on financial regulation. Bean’s former Chief of Staff John Michael Gonzalez was one of the nineteen former government officials they hired.

* FACT: Bean received over 40% of her 2009 campaign contributions from the finance, insurance and real estate sector.


Somebody will have to explain to me why appointing Melissa Bean to head the CFPA is “good politics,” or why only “reformers on the left” would think it was a boneheaded move. Bean has consistently opposed popular measures to rein in the banks, while taking huge sums of money from the Chamber of Commerce and the banks, at a time when the public blames the banks (and politicians who are too cozy with them) for the state of the economy. The fact that her name would be floated at all as the head of an agency to oversee the banks is an indication that there’s some sort of death wish on the part of Democrats for the 2012 election.

But as a matter of policy, let’s remember that Melissa Bean was the author of the amendment to neuter the CFPA. She led the charge on behalf of the Wall Street banks to include “federal preemption” in the legislation, meaning that state regulations could be no tougher than the federal guidelines. Heather Booth, director of Americans for Financial Reform, said that “Bean’s amendment was considered the biggest threat to the CFPA.”

Before the election, Glenn Greenwald was on Democracy Now talking about Elizabeth Warren’s appointment as “Special Advisor” to Timothy Geithner, to help set up the CFPA. He said:

You even saw, with the cynical appointment of Elizabeth Warren, who probably will do some good being able to create this agency to police Wall Street abuses, nonetheless they stayed away from the fight to actually appoint her as the director of this agency, so that once the election is over, they can find somebody more pleasing to Wall Street.

If in fact Bean is appointed to head the CFPA, it’s safe to say that appointing Elizabeth Warren was indeed a “cynical” bait-and-switch move meant to gin up enthusiasm among liberals before the election. Because Bean would be much, much more pleasing to Wall Street. And it won’t just be “liberals” who think so.

See the full piece for numerous links to information corroborating these facts.


(Bold type in original piece)

[TheWraith]

1. Shock of shocks, the lead Firebagger finds a reason to be outraged.

Apparently after being massively wrong about Elizabeth Warren getting the nod to create the agency, Hamsher needs to find a new way to gin up anti-Obama hatred on the left.

[highprincipleswork]

2. Not hard to do.

Not hard to create feelings of displeasure from Progressives with President Obama, when he scarcely makes a move that is likely to please them.

[Nite Owl]

3. I'vw stopped being surprised

at the stuff this administration pulls. We can write and complain all we want I doubt that they will listen or care. '12 is going to be more of the other side is worse, vote for us again.

[amborin]

4. she voted against extending unemployment payments

[asdjrocky]

5. So much bs from this adminastration, so little time...

left.

[BzaDem]

6. There is no way he would have appointed Warren to create the agency just to appoint Bean later.

This is bullshit.

[DJ13]

7. Said one administration official: “It’s not clear she would be acceptable to the reformers.”

Oh good, they already have a label for those who might not support their final choice.

Isnt that cute.

[bluesmail]

8. I hope I'm not wrong. Elizabeth Warren is the CFPB.

Or did I miss something? :shrug:

[seafan]

10. This exchange at Democracy Now explains what happened.

September 21, 2010

AMY GOODMAN: At the same time, he’s battling to overturn "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell." At the Netroots Nation conference, he hugged Dan Choi and said he, you know, promised to give him his ring back when they overturned "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell," though it’s not clear he will beat McCain on this.

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, it’s incredibly cynical. I mean, you see this flurry of activity over the last four weeks from President Obama and from Democratic leaders suddenly trying to don once again their progressive masks to convince people that they ought to go to the polls. And they know that "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" won’t be repealed. They know the DREAM Act is not actually going to be enacted. All of these measures that they’re talking about to stimulate the economy and create jobs are things that they know won’t happen, and that’s why they’re able to advocate them. You even saw, with the cynical appointment of Elizabeth Warren, who probably will do some good being able to create this agency to police Wall Street abuses, nonetheless they stayed away from the fight to actually appoint her as the director of this agency, so that once the election is over, they can find somebody more pleasing to Wall Street. So you—

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that, what they actually did.

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, there’s this—one of the best parts about the financial regulation bill, maybe the only truly meaningful part, is the creation of this agency, which is the idea of Professor Elizabeth Warren at Harvard to essentially police the ability of Wall Street to put fine print into mortgage and credit applications that lure the consumer into extremely one-sided and imbalanced transactions that they don’t know about, because they lack the sophistication, they don’t have lawyers to do it. And the idea of the progressive base was that she is the person who ought to be heading this agency, because she is genuinely committed to the idea of limiting Wall Street abuses. She’s a crusader for economic justice and for protection of consumers, exactly the kind of person that this administration needs but doesn’t have in important financial positions.

And the problem was, progressives were demanding it, but their real constituency, which is Wall Street and business, are horrified by the idea of Elizabeth Warren, and they needed to find some solution, because if they didn’t nominate her, progressives would be in revolt before the election. And so, what they did was they created this hybrid solution, where they pretended that they were going to appoint her, even though she has no real authority—she’s just an adviser to the President—to set up the agency, but not to run it, and meanwhile they’re telling Wall Street, "Oh, don’t worry, she’s not really going to have any authority. She’s not going to be the person who’s running it." And it’s these kind of symbolic gestures in the last several weeks that I think are almost more offensive, as they try and pretend that they are something that for the last two years they haven’t been.

Time is going to tell on this one.

[Canuckistanian]

9. Warren should have been recess-appointed to the position

Pure and simple.

[seafan]

11. It's been nothing short of a cat-and-mouse game with Ms. Warren's expertise.

Certain people are paid handsomely not to hear what the people want.


We aren't getting Elizabeth Warren in any way, shape or form that threatens Wall Street. Not from the current leadership.