Backers Say Warren Has Time to Make Her Mark

By Sharon Johnson

WeNews senior correspondent

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Obama's temporary appointment of Elizabeth Warren as startup head of Wall Street's consumer regulatory group is seen as a way of circumnavigating her political foes. But onlookers say she has time to make her mark and help Obama on Nov. 2

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Part of Financial Reform Battle

Warren's appointment is the latest chapter in the vociferous battle over reform of the financial system, which attracted major and controversial taxpayer bailouts in 2008.

Progressive Democrats, unions and advocates for women's financial security lobbied for inclusion of the bureau in the sweeping financial overhaul law Obama signed in July, arguing that existing federal regulations hadn't protect consumers from predatory lenders.

Female homeowners were almost twice as likely to hold subprime loans as male borrowers, even though some women had adequate credit scores to qualify for conventional mortgages.

Warren's supporters said she was the best candidate to lead the agency, because she had proposed the bureau in a 2007 essay in Democracy, a Washington-based journal, in which she had written that "kitchen appliances were better regulated than mortgages and credit cards."

After trying to snuff out the bureau, the financial services industry and its Republican and centrist Democrat allies in Congress mounted a campaign to deny Warren a role in the bureau, arguing that she would institute regulations that would make credit difficult to acquire

The day Warren's appointment was announced Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said in a press statement that Warren would "put the agency in charge of making millions of decisions that ought to be made by the free market or by community banks."

Outsider to Old Boys Club

Susan J. Carroll, senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick, said that the criticism was predictable, because "Warren has never been part of the Old Boys network in the financial community where women are regarded as unpredictable stewards of the economy."

Attacks on Warren as "anti-market" are false, said Katherine M. Porter, professor of law at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

"Warren has a wider view of the market and what is necessary to foster the growth of the economy through credit than does Wall Street," she said. "Warren wants to level the playing field, so that single mothers will be able to get affordable mortgages and college graduates won't have to work two jobs to pay off student loans with exorbitant interest rates."

Consumer advocates are concerned that Warren's opponents in Congress may sabotage her efforts to get the new bureau up and running by withholding funds from the agency, which is expected to have a budget of up to $500 million.

Warren might also face opposition from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who has supported the positions of the banks, the Treasury department's traditional constituency, throughout the debate over financial reform.

As chair of the congressional watchdog committee that oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program that provided a $700 billion bailout for banks, Warren had criticized Geithner for the Treasury Department's failure to require banks to do more to enable families in foreclosure to retain their homes.

New battles may be on the horizon because vague language in the financial overhaul law leaves room for interpretation of regulations for credit card fees, bank overdraft charges and payday loans.

The legislation establishes a new council of regulators led by Geithner who will have the power to nullify the new bureau's rules if they are deemed to jeopardize the stability of the financial system.

Warren was the first women on the faculty of the University of Houston Law School in Texas. She also taught at Rutgers, the University of Texas, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania law schools before joining the Harvard faculty in 1992. CNN reported that Obama considered appointing Warren to take the seat of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens when the 90-year-old justice retired in June.