Wall Street’s Badge of Honor to Elizabeth Warren

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Last updated on February 19th, 2013 at 09:51 am

Senator Elizabeth Warren scares the tea out of Wall Street. She understands the game and how Wall Street plays it. She knows how to fix a system rigged in favor of Wall Street. Now that she is a Senator and a member of the Senate Banking Committee, Wall Street will be shaking in their designer boots more than they have in a long time.

I’m guessing that Republicans who thought they put this smart and gutsy woman back in the binder for good when they blocked her nomination as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are wishing they had left well enough alone. .

Now Elizabeth Warren is in their faces every working day, as the senior Senator from Massachusetts. Thanks, GOP! Sometimes you really are a liberal’s best friend – especially when you come up with super “clever” strategies that blow up in your faces. She wants accountability for Wall Street much to the chagrin of Wall Street advocates in Congress who believe accountability is for the little people.

Senator Warren isn’t wasting any time exposing the system that the GOP built to give Wall Street free reign to do whatever they want to the global and national economies, and getting free stuff when they screw up instead of being held accountable.

She represents the majority in America who want accountability from the banks and worse yet for the banks, she asks harder questions than how much of the taxpayers’ money do you want this time?

“One would be because nobody believes that the banks’ books are honest … Second, would be that nobody believes that the banks are really manageable. That is, if they are too complex either for their own institutions to manage them or for the regulators to manage them.”

She’s so extreme asking hard questions like that laments Wall Street. One top exec emailed Politico:

“While Senator Warren had every right to ask pointed questions at today’s Senate Banking Committee hearing, her claim that ‘nobody believes’ that bank books are honest is just plain wrong. As Federal Reserve Governor Tarullo explained in response to her question, the low valuations are more likely due to continued economic uncertainty and concerns on the part of investors regarding the impact on banks’ profitability due to the hundreds of new regulations, higher levels of required capital, and significant activity restrictions.”

Being called extreme by Wall Street is a badge of honor, sort of like being on the NRA’s enemies’ list. It means you’re sane, but more frightening to Wall Street, it means you’re effective and they know it.

As the Obama Administration’s attack on Medicare Fraud is yielding results, there is reason to hope that financial fraudsters will face a similar fate.

Elizabeth Warren won’t just bat her eyelashes while the GOP does everything possible to weaken and destroy the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – like obstructing confirmation of its director, Richard Cordray or begging the President to please reduce its ability to expose Wall Street’s corruption.

“It is past time for an up-or-down vote,” Warren said Thursday. “The financial industry needs certainty, and families need to know there is a strong and independent watchdog on their side in Washington.”

To that end, we can let Republicans know that the American people join with Senator Warren’s request for a vote on Cordray’s Nomination by signing this petition.

With Elizabeth Warren around, the GOP and Wall Street’s headaches are just starting.

Image from Bloomberg