Elizabeth Warren on Charlie Rose. For me the money quote comes when she is talking about the Financial Regulation Reform Bill in Congress right now:
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10895#frame_top
"CHARLIE ROSE: And so do you think Senator Dodd and Senator Corker are
serving the interest of the bank lobby?
ELIZABETH WARREN: We’ll know when this bill comes out of Congress.
CHARLIE ROSE: The financial reform bill.
ELIZABETH WARREN: That’s right.
CHARLIE ROSE: Let me just stay with it for a second in a sense that
if you look at it as a part of the overall financial regulation reform,
where do you put its significance?
ELIZABETH WARREN: The tip of the spear.
CHARLIE ROSE: Tip of the spear?
ELIZABETH WARREN: Yes. And it’s the tip of the spear in two senses
of that word. It’s the tip of the spear in the sense this is where our
financial crises started, one lousy mortgage at a time, one family who got
fooled, tricked, cheated at a time.
Then those risks were aggregated, sliced and diced, put into all kinds
of fancy financial instruments, ultimately traded, made billions for the
Wall Street banks. And then brought the whole system -- so tip of the
spear in terms of where it’s starting.
But also tip of the spear in whether or not our political system
works. You know, if you can’t make this work for American families, then
what hope is there for the pieces that are complicated and in which people
with lots of money and lots of power are in --
CHARLIE ROSE: So you’re saying unless this is an independent agency
outside which they bring all the powers that are existing everywhere
together and give it jurisdiction, give it power, give it budget, give it -
- that everything else is at risk."
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I love Elizabeth Warren.
ReplyDeleteAnother good quote about the potential for a double dip recession:
ReplyDelete"CHARLIE ROSE: Commercial real estate, what are we looking at.
ELIZABETH WARREN: Oh golly -- 2,988 banks that by the terms of their own regulators are too concentrated in commercial real estate. These are the medium size banks. By the end of this year, half of all commercial real estate loans will be underwater, and they are coming in ‘11, ‘12 and ‘13.
The reason this is such a bad problem anyway -- think about that, nearly 3,000 banks out of a total of 8,000 -- it’s the very banks that do small business lending who are about to get socked in the nose on real estate, commercial real estate losses.
CHARLIE ROSE: So we’ll see banks going under because they’ve got too many loans out there are not being repaid?
ELIZABETH WARREN: We’re seeing banks that don’t want to lend because they see every dollar that comes in the door and say "I’ve got to hold on to it to try to fill my commercial real estate hole or else I will be gone."