The Congress is going to try and screw us by way of Big Banks… but at least we have Elizabeth Warren.

Jon Stewart did a very nice interview with Elizabeth Warren, the Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Elizabeth Warren

Her concern was that major banks, like Citigroup, and major Wall Street players are trying to “knife” her agency in the back… and that includes support from our Representative here in WV’s District 2, Shelley Moore Capito (R), who is chair of the Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittee.

Warren is a very smart and intelligent woman with an agency that has very little actual power… therefore, her major strength lies in making people aware of the financial situation which has kept the middle class in financial slavery.

Warren said that the bank lobbyists and their supporters in Congress won’t be able to “knife the agency in the back alley” if they “actually believe people will pay attention, if they believe people care about this.”

To which Jon Stewart replied:

“or if they still have the capacity to feel shame — you begin to wonder at times.”

There is going to be a vote in the House Financial Services Committee next week which will delay the opening of Warren’s Agency, or, at the very least, will weaken its activities. A great many people got into the fight in public last year to set up the agency Warren will head. This year, however, the attacks against this agency are happening in secret.

Warren brought up one of her major interests, the devastating agreements that banks attach to consumer credit cards:

“There was a survey last year. Ninety-six percent of Americans said — I want to get rid of the fine print in credit card agreements and mortgages. I think it is there just to cheat me, to hide things from me. Ninety-one percent felt strongly about it. When that is the case, that’s not Democrats, that’s not Republicans, that’s not Libertarians. This is not partisan. It’s basic and sensible. This game is about trying to push the sensible part right back in the middle and say that’s what we have a responsibility to do.”

“This consumer agency is a tangible, very concrete down payment on the notion that together we can build something that is fairer, and give middle class families a chance to survive, maybe even prosper.”

– Elizabeth Warren   

Even if you saw Warren on the Daily Show Tuesday night, this is one of those interviews where Stewart kept it going past the show’s end. You can see the whole interview at http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/tue-april-26-2011-elizabeth-warren . Thanks to Morgan County USA for the basic information on Capito.

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• The GOP’s Pathetic Attack on Elizabeth Warren (alternet.org)
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Congress returning this week after a well-deserved time off (When do these guys actually WORK?

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”    – Mark Twain

After not being in session for over a week (when do these guys actually WORK?) our Congressmen and women are returning this week (of course, Monday, like Friday, is a travel day … when do these guys actually WORK?) and are going to take on the debt limit.

Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, says that the debt limit has to be raised in May or we will default on our debt payments by July. That will destroy our credit rating and make it impossible to borrow money which the country needs to survive.

Some Republicans don’t agree, however, as was made clear on yesterday’s talking head shows.

Senator Coburn... Why is this man smiling?d shows.

Senator Tom Coburn (R -Oklahoma) on Meet The Press:

“The debt limit doesn’t really mean anything because we’ve always extended it. The Treasury secretary has the ability, even if this debt limit is not extended, to continue to pay interest on our loans. The idea that this is catastrophic is wrong — what is catastrophic is to continue to spend money we don’t have.”

And Coburn is a well-known economist..what? He isn’t? Sorry.

Representative Joe Walsh (R-Illinois) on Face The Nation:

Rep. Walsh... He looks like he knows...

“Over the course of those few months when the debt ceiling wasn’t raised, Armageddon didn’t hit, the government paid its bills — we’ve got enough government revenues to certainly pay, to service all of our debt. And the administration knows that. The administration’s got to get serious and recognize that we’re not just going to give them a vote to raise the debt ceiling unless they fundamentally change the way this city works.”

Walsh, as you may know, is actively campaigning to extend the Bush tax cuts… is that how we get enough money to pay the debts? Don’t think so.

It’s interesting that, during the Bush administration, that when the debt ceiling was raised 7 times, no Republican objected or said ANYTHING (when do these guys actually WORK?). That shows their collective economic knowledge must have been recently earned… perhaps they read about it in a magazine.

Related Articles

• Republicans Downplay Urgency Of Raising Debt Ceiling (huffingtonpost.com)
• GOP’s Kirk: Attach deficit plan to debt increase (cbsnews.com)
• Republicans Skeptical on Raising Debt Limit (blogs.wsj.com)
• Coburn: S&P downgrade a “warning shot across our bow” (thehill.com)
• Geithner Calling GOP’s Bluff? Secretary Says Congress Will Vote to Raise Debt … (foxnews.com)
• Geithner: ‘Congress Will Raise the Debt Ceiling’ – Fox News (news.google.com)
• World turns its attention on the U.S. debt problem. (genomega1.wordpress.com)

Let’s hear it for Ben Stein…

Ben Stein

I was surprised this morning to hear Ben Stein on CBS Sunday Morning, who I know is a conservative and who has talked about the need for budget cuts before, speak this morning on the ratio of the Deficit to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Surprised because:

1. he had good things to say about Bill Clinton and his Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin who left office giving us a surplus… and
2.  he stated that the Republicans would have to agree to raising taxes…especially on the Rich Americans who, he said, there are plenty of and they CAN afford it.

I’m even more surprised because, just before the 2010 elections, he did a Sunday Morning piece complaining that, as a rich guy, he was paying too much in taxes and didn’t want taxes on the rich raised. Something has changed his mind… which means other conservatives can change their minds as well. Whether this applies to Tea Party types is your guess.

Now, he did also say that the Democrats were going to have to agree to budget cuts, but they should be able to look at the military and some of the other areas we are not looking at now (I assume he was talking about oil subsidies and their related entities.)

You know, I felt pretty good about Ben Stein this morning… I usually haven’t felt good about him since he stopped doing a comedy quiz show with Jimmy Kimmel. But this morning I’ll give him the benefit of my appreciation for his ilttle editorial… and I hope some of these politicians heard it.

Related Articles

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• Bill Clinton: Pharma Got a “Good Deal” in Health Reform (invivoblog.blogspot.com)
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From NPR: Good TARP News Doesn’t Fit; Media Are Flummoxed…

When Republicans keep sticking their tongues out at TARP and its results, it doesn’t seem to matter that it was apparently successful. This is on the NPR web site… go in and read it all!

clipped from www.npr.org A year ago, TARP was a clear villain — as when this protester appeared on Capitol Hill when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was preparing to testify. Many in the news media haven’t caught up with the more recent better news about the program.   What do we do with the end of TARP? And what do we do with the news that TARP will not have cost anything like the $700 billion we thought it would? What if it really cost $50 billion, or less? What if, in the end, the Troubled Asset Relief Program so controversial at birth and vilified throughout its two years of life turns out to have turned a profit for the government and the taxpayer? We — most of the news media this is — simply don’t know what to do with this news Because the government did do TARP, and those other things did not happen. We did not go back to 1929 or worse. And, unlovely as it may be, TARP remains the closest thing we have to an explanation for that.

Related Articles

• A Look Back At TARP’s Successes, Failures (npr.org)
• TARP’s final cost could be way less than first advertised (shortformblog.com)
• Geithner Debunks Five Greatest Myths About TARP (huffingtonpost.com)
• TARP: From Maligned to Benign? (wallstreetpit.com)
• Treasury cuts estimate of TARP loss to $51 billion (knoxnews.com)

Larry Summers Will Be leaving The White House…

IT’S ABOUT TIME!

This clip from HuffPo:

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com Lawrence Summers, the White House’s top economic adviser, will leave at the end of the year and return to his position as a professor at Harvard University, according to a statement released by the White House today. (The news was first reported by Hans Nichols of Bloomberg News.) Earlier today, amid rumors of their departure, White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs said that President Obama is “enormously pleased” with the performance of Summers and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Reuters reported. To fend off claims of being anti-business, the Obama administration may replace Summers, who serves as the director of the president’s National Economic Council, with a top corporate executive, Bloomberg reports. In April, Joshua Green of The Atlantic also predicted Summers would depart sometime close to the midterm elections.

Related Articles

• Larry Summers, Top Obama Economic Adviser, Likely Leaving White House After Election: Bloomberg (huffingtonpost.com)
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