Warren: The middle class “became the turkey at the thanksgiving dinner"
Below is a YouTube clip featuring Elizabeth Warren, the chair of Congress’ oversight panel of TARP (the Troubled Asset relief Program), the bailout started by Hank Paulson and passed by Congress. In it she talks about her fears regarding the lack of real regulatory reform in the world of finance and how this is setting up the destruction of the middle class in America.
Her argument about the shaking down of the middle class is the same one I made in the post about greed. She has long been a champion of the middle class. I recommend the compelling book she wrote with her daughter called “The Two Income Trap,” which gets at the heart of why middle class families have become so indebted in the United States.
I don’t think Warren is out to score political points (at least not against the Obama Administration as she is a Democrat). But, she is not convinced the Administration is committed to reform and has decided to speak out to help encourage a greater will to reform. To be fair, I should point out that progress on this front was made today in OTC derivatives. And Larry Summers has been waxing prosaically about the middle class as well. But, her depiction of earlier conversations with Tim Geithner are tellingregarding her worries (H/T Zero Hedge).
Ah, yes, again the well intentioned, serious, big sis Elizabeth Warren, who, without realizing it, simply serves to paliate the outrage of “progressives” by making it seem as though someone in government really understands, empathizes and can and actually will do something about the abuses that so press upon the average American. Distilled, her message and the purpose it serves comes down to this: We get it and, darn it, we’re not going to let ’em get away with it. Which, of course, is about as close to burlesque as Ms. Warren is ever likely to get.
It ought to be obvious to even the most hopeful at this juncture, what with the fate of “change you can believe in” and “si, se puede”, that if BS were green, Elizabeth Warren would be an 18 hole golf course. Nothing will change with the advent of Ms. Warren, absolutely nothing. What’s sad is that she’ll keep some folks voting that really ought to know better by this time.
You really are jaded, aren’t you. :)
Hello Ed,
Perhaps its the attained late stage in life, the realization that after the granny condo there comes the warehouse and, eventually, the glue factory. In any case, it seems vain to me to place hope in the human enterprize which at, best, is to see reason as salvific, a reason all too clearly limited and ambiguous morally. Better a reliance on a loving God who absolutely detests greed, exploitive bailouts, war, infanticide and liars. This by all means before Nancy Pelosi, please. :-)