Evans Liberal Politics, September 16, 2010, compiled by Paul Evans, photo of Elizabeth Warren from Wikipedia:

Sources: Obama to name adviser for new consumer agency, CNN Politics, September 15, 2010, by Dana Bash, Ed Henry and Jessica Yellin, excerpt quoted verbatim:

Washington (CNN) — President Obama plans to name Elizabeth Warren as a special adviser to help set up a new consumer protection agency created under the Wall Street reform bill, according to sources who spoke on condition of not being identified by name.

A Democratic official said Wednesday that Warren’s title would be assistant to the president and special adviser to the secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In her role, Warren would report directly to Obama and to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner while leading the administration’s work in starting up the new bureau, the official said.

Elizabeth Warren to be Named to Advisory Position This Week

In addition, a senior administration official said Obama will name Warren to the advisory position this week.

The move would allow Warren to help set up the new consumer protection agency but bypass a potentially difficult Senate confirmation battle if she were nominated to formally run the agency.

At his news conference last week, Obama said the Senate confirmation process has been bogged down by Republican partisanship. Obama said then he had several conversations with Warren, a Harvard University professor who has long been considered the leading candidate for the job, but he stopped short of officially nominating her.

Warren, 61, was favored by liberal Democrats to run the new agency charged with protecting consumers from abusive mortgage and credit card practices. However, her nomination was considered likely to draw opposition in the Senate over concerns about her liberal leanings and lack of government experience.

It was unclear how much authority Warren would have in the advisory role.

The Democratic official said that appointing Warren as an advisor would allow her to get involved immediately in setting up the agency. If nominated to be the new agency’s director, she would be unable to play a decision-making role until confirmed, the official noted.

Obama can still nominate a director of the new bureau, and Warren will participate in the selection process, the official added.

A spokesperson for Moveon.org, the liberal political advocacy group, said the title of Warren’s job wouldn’t matter if she had the necessary clout.

“As long as Professor Warren has real power, real authority and real support to hold the big banks accountable and stand up for American families, then our members — and Americans everywhere — will welcome this news,” said Ilyse Hogue, the group’s director of political advocacy and communications.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which led a campaign to get Warren named the director of the new agency, said in a statement it hoped the appointment would provide Warren with the power she needed to do the job right.

“If Elizabeth Warren is given full power to run the new consumer protection bureau and hold Wall Street accountable, it will mean real change — and voters will know that going into November’s election,” the group’s statement said. “If this appointment is window dressing and Tim Geithner controls the show, it would be a big disappointment and a victory for Wall Street.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who sits with the Democratic caucus, praised the move by Obama as a necessary step to get the new agency running. ….

Read the full article, here.

Elizabeth Warren Named Special Adviser

More News From Around the Web
on the Elizabeth Warren Appointment

Elizabeth Warren Named Special Advisor, Daily Kos, September 15, 2010, by RhodaA.

She’s an outspoken advocate for families, described as having “a seemingly visceral loathing of financial services companies.” Her husband, Bruce Mann, describes her as “a grandmother who can make grown men cry.” Her brother, David Herring, said, “She was tougher than a snake, partner.”

“I’m writing to let you know that Professor Jerry Frug will be teaching your Contracts class this term instead of Professor Elizabeth Warren.” Martha Minow, Dean Harvard Law School

Ever since the Washington Post published the story on September 2nd that Warren had abruptly dropped her Contracts Law class at Harvard Law School, rumors abounded that she had been chosen to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It was also known that she had met last month with Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod to talk about the post, and again, on September 7th, with President Obama. Now, after conflicting reports of an interim appointment, Obama has made his choice.

White House Taps Warren To Set Up Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

White House Taps Warren To Set Up Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, The Huffington Post, September 15, 2010, by Shahien Nasiripour:

“Anyone who knows her knows that she would only take a position that had real meat to it,” said one source who had worked closely with Warren in the past. “I mean, seriously, you’ve seen her in action. Do you really think she’s going to be anyone’s lapdog? She bites hard.”

The nascent consumer unit being formed inside Treasury already has more than 35 employees, said Steven Adamske, Treasury’s deputy assistant secretary for public affairs. The number will swell in the coming months as the agency is developed. It will soon move out of the Treasury building near the White House and into a building leased by Treasury for its Office of Financial Stability just a few short blocks away, Adamske said.

Yet while speculation centered on whether Obama would nominate the outspoken and respected academic and advocate, HuffPost reported July 19 that Warren could head the agency without Senate confirmation. Lenders — but notably their friends in the Senate — began to publicly question whether Warren possessed the aptitude or management skill to run a large bureaucracy. The new consumer regulator will eventually house hundreds of employees and have a budget approaching $500 million.

Yet those questions took a backseat to her confirmability. Dodd began telling reporters that he had serious reservations over whether Warren, viewed as a polarizing figure given her aggressive advocacy on behalf of the middle class, would survive a Senate confirmation battle.

Dodd, whose name forms one half of the financial re-regulation bill that Obama recently signed into law, may have been concerned about a deliberate attempt to delay the agency’s formation, which could have occurred had Obama named Warren and Senators began to delay her confirmation, or vote her down.

As part of a gentleman’s agreement between the White House and the Senate, presidential nominees typically do not work in their nominated roles until they are confirmed. Had Obama formally nominated Warren, she wouldn’t have begun forming the agency until that time.

However, a HuffPost review found that Dodd had never before questioned a presidential nominee’s management experience — even when those nominees lacked it. Over the past several years, Dodd, a longtime member of the banking committee, declined to critically question nominees to financial regulatory agencies. He even skipped a few confirmation hearings altogether.

Warren, though, slowly began to pick up endorsements. Democrats in the House and Senate sent letters to Obama urging her nomination. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, a Democrat from Warren’s adopted home state of Massachusetts and the other half of the financial bill, said that Obama should simply give her a recess appointment, bypassing the Senate completely.

Republicans, too, began to endorse her. A former top official in the Reagan administration said a vote for Warren was akin to a vote for capitalism and free markets.

Yet still the administration declined to name her to the post. Speculation centered on a divide within the White House — longtime Obama advisers David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett were for her, while Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and top economic adviser Larry Summers were against her. Geithner favored one of his top aides, Michael Barr, an assistant secretary at Treasury who helped shepherd the financial reform bill through Congress.

Axelrod, though, hinted today’s Warren news back in July, noting that “one thing I know for certain is however we move forward she’s going to be a strong voice in helping shape this and make it the most effective voice for consumers that it possibly can be.”

Lenders, already wary of the reforms to be implemented by Dodd-Frank, may react to a Warren appointment by being overly cautious in the credit products they offer consumers — like mortgages, credit cards and personal loans — and thus freeze up lending. Despite the fact that the nation is in the midst of a collective process of cleaning up its balance sheet — paying off debt, building up nest eggs for future expansion and purchases — the additional drying up of credit would significantly hurt the economy.

Those concerns may still exist. But for the time being, Warren’s backers won the fight within the administration. And giving her a seat at the table when it comes to economic matters is particularly significant, given that the key economic policy positions within the administration are mostly occupied by alums of the Hamilton Project — an initiative partly founded by former Goldman Sachs head and Citigroup chairman Robert Rubin. The former Treasury Secretary under Clinton, Rubin has mentored Summers and Geithner, and his disciples populate the White House and Treasury. The Project — and its alums — aren’t noted for their progressive economic policy positions, or their advocacy on behalf of everyday families.

Warren, however, is associated with the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive organization dedicated to advancing New Deal-like reforms that’s part of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in New York. Her inclusion in internal White House debates could help shape eventual policy proposals.

White House economic policy proposals to jumpstart the stalling recovery — and bring down the 9.6 percent unemployment rate — have thus far received tepid support from leading economists and market commentators.

Warren’s path to the helm of the agency began on March 10, 2009, as she joined Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Reps. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) and Brad Miller (D-N.C.) in the Capitol Visitors Center to announce a bill to create what was then being called the Financial Product Safety Commission. Warren, at the microphone, laid out how the financial crisis could have been prevented had an effective FPSC been in place.

Elizabeth Warren, likely to head new consumer agency, provokes strong feelings, The Washington Post, August 13, 2010, by Brady Dennis.

Somewhere along the line, Elizabeth Warren became a symbol.

She’s either the plain-spoken, supremely smart crusader for middle-class families that her supporters adore, or she’s the power-hungry headline seeker her critics loathe, a fiery zealot disguised in professorial glasses and pastel cardigans.

…SNIP….

She was the child of a cash-strapped family on the Oklahoma plains, a teenage wife and young mother who became the only member of her immediate family to graduate from college, then went on to teach at Harvard Law School. Drawn to the field of bankruptcy, she initially took a jaundiced view of the irresponsible spendthrifts she believed were gaming the system, only to discover during her research a humanity in their stories that altered her life’s work. She has long maintained the bearing of a straight-shooting, “aw shucks” Washington outsider, even though she began showing her Beltway savvy as a political infighter more than a decade ago.

Will Obama Give Elizabeth Warren the Power She Needs?

See Warren to Unofficially Lead Consumer Agency, The New York Times, September 15, 2010, by Sewell Chan.

For a negative view of the appointment see Triumph of the Money Party!!! Warren’s role downgraded, reports to Geithner, OpEdNews, September 16, 2010, by Michael Collins.

Also fairly negative is Obama Prepares to Sort of Appoint Elizabeth Warren to Something, Common Dreams.org, September 16, 2010, by John Nichols of The Nation.

Recommended: See Will Warren Have Power?, Daily Kos, September 15, 2010, by Stephanie Taylor.

See Republican Nightmare: Putting Elizabeth Warren to Work Now, September 10, 2010, by Simon Johnson: this is the earliest news I’ve found strongly hinting that Obama would move in this direction:

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.

See Thank you Mr. President for appointing Elizabeth Warren, City Data Forum, ongoing.

See America Still Needs Elizabeth Warren, And The Bank Lobby Is Still Lying About Her, Campaign for America’s Future on Evans Liberal Politics, August 9, 2010, by Zach Carter.

See Exclusive: President Obama to This Week Name Elizabeth Warren to Special Advisory Role to White House/Treasury Dept to Form New Consumer Agency, ABC News Political Punch, September 15, 2010, by Jake Tapper.

At his press conference Friday, President Obama noted that “the idea for this agency was Elizabeth Warren’s,” a reference to an essay she wrote in 2007 in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas in which she proposed a “Financial Product Safety Commission.”

The president went on to call Warren “a dear friend of mine. She’s somebody I’ve known since I was in law school. And I have been in conversations with her. She is a tremendous advocate for this idea. It’s only been a couple of months, and this is a big task standing up this entire agency, so I’ll have an announcement soon about how we’re going to move forward.”

Naming Warren as an assistant or counselor to both the president and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner would allow the president to bypass a Senate confirmation process that could prove lengthy and contentious.

“I’m concerned about all Senate confirmations these days” including if he were to “nominate somebody for dog catcher,” the president said Friday when asked if he was concerned about Warren’s ability to be confirmed. “I’ve got people who have been waiting for six months to get confirmed who nobody has an official objection to and who were voted out of committee unanimously, and I can’t get a vote on them.”

Since nominees facing the confirmation process also enter a period of public silence, avoiding the confirmation process would also allow Warren to publicly discuss the agency and its benefits, which the president is eager for her to do.

Recommended: Exclusive: Elizabeth Warren in her own words, Salon, September 15, 2010, by Lynn Paramore, excerpt quoted verbatim:

What are some of the values that were instilled in your childhood that you would like to see emphasized now?

I guess it is a fundamental belief that people are doing the best they can. It is easy when you are successful to think that you did it all by yourself and to forget that you didn’t. You got here because a lot of things broke your way. You were lucky enough to be born into a family that could afford to take care of you well. You were lucky enough to be able to have a family that could pay for you to go to school or buy your way out of scrapes. And to people who have had a lot of luck and don’t acknowledge that — the world looks like a total meritocracy, right? I’m on top because I really won, because I am better than everyone else.

I think I grew up with a profound sense of watching people who were good people, who were smart people, who were hardworking people — God, nobody on this Earth worked harder than my mom and dad — and they had very little. But they made do with what they had. They had their family, they raised four kids who loved them and four kids who all had our own families that we loved. And so, I guess the only way I can say it is that the value is in knowing that the game doesn’t always come out fairly. There is a lot more going on. The material success at the end of the day is only a small part of it. Truly successful lives are about family.

Read the Wikipedia article on Elizabeth Warren.

Highly Recommended: Watch Conversations with History: Elizabeth Warren — “Law, Politics and the Coming Collapse of the Middle Class,” Presented by the Institute of International Studies, Univ. of California at Berkeley, January 10, 2008, 59:11

Note by Paul Evans: It was Elizabeth Warren who first proposed the Consumer Protection Agency in the first place, in an article titled Unsafe at Any Rate, in the summer of 2007.

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