Elizabeth Warren: Consumers against Big Finance.

You can already see the forces of corporate USA massing against Warren. There will be the continuous evocation of mantras about free markets and how regulation will kill businesses and restrict job growth. Already the US Chamber of Commerce is massing its formidable forces in opposition to a Consumer Protection Agency. One can hear the chants growing louder:More big government more killing the goose that lays the golden egg . Nothing about stopping the consumer from getting goosed.


In fight over credit rules, she wields a plan
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff | November 3, 2009

CAMBRIDGE - Her critics portray her as an ivory tower elitist intent on disrupting the American Dream. But to her legions of fans in the Democratic Party, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren is the nation's leading economic David, fighting to protect middle-class families from corporate Goliaths.

....And she is chief architect of a new government agency to protect consumers from predatory lenders, a central element of President Obama's efforts to avoid another economic meltdown. That makes her a big target.

"I have dubbed it the ‘Restrict the American Dream and Job Destruction Act,' '' Representative Tom PriceTom Price of Georgia, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a group of 110 GOP House members, said in an interview about Warren's proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. "I have no doubt that as a Northeast elite academic it is difficult for Ms. Warren to appreciate that, but that's exactly what it will do.''

Warren, 60, has researched the issue of risky credit practices and bankruptcy for years, as she worked her way to Harvard Law School through a handful of university teaching jobs. Deceptive lending practices, she said, were at the root of the 2008 financial meltdown and have devastated the middle class.

While business groups are opposed to the consumer agency, they are even more worried about the possibility that, if it is created, Warren will be put in charge.

...The US Chamber of Commerce has launched an intensive campaign to kill the idea, using the theme: "Stop the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.''

Warren's route to the center of the nation's debate over financial regulation has taken a more complicated path than many of her backers and critics may realize.

She was once a registered Republican who believed that most families who filed for bankruptcy or had their homes foreclosed were irresponsible. It was only after years of study, she said, that she determined that many families were not primarily at fault.

...Warren says she never envisioned herself as someone who would become a nemesis of corporate America. But after working on several bankruptcy studies, she concluded that most people who declare bankruptcy are undone by a combination of questionable banking practices and outsize medical expenses. By the time Warren returned to Harvard in 1995, she had switched her political affiliation to the Democratic Party because she was convinced that "the Republican Party had left me'' and left behind the middle class.

But in 2005, Congress once again approved the measure, with support from many moderate Democrats, and President BushPresident Bush signed the law. In Warren's view, the imposition of tougher bankruptcy laws made it more difficult for many people to forestall foreclosure on their home loans and played a role in the subsequent financial meltdown.

.......