wow, thanks jane

I absolutely and positively love Warren. Bully for her for sticking to her guns and doing the job she was hired to do. Can’t wait to see what happens next.

If financial nerds had groupies…
Elizabeth is stepping up, and that’s a big bet. The internal debate in the White House will center around replacing her.
Go Liz!

Brooksley Born, Sheila Bair, Elizabeth Warren. The boyz really need to hand over the keys and let the womenz drive awhile.

Anybody have any idea how we could show her (and her superiors) some support?

Elizabeth Warren can be reached via the Congressional Oversight Panel at cop.senate.gov

She is a treasure. I expect the Obama admin to ignore her. Actively.

Good Morning, Fire Pups:

Elizabeth Warren is the Genuine Article. I suspect that when she was appointed it wasn’t anticipated that she would actually do her job. (What a concept.) Now they’ve got a Lioness by the tail and they can’t let go. Oops. Ha!!

Wow!

set to call for shareholders in those institutions to be “wiped out”.

Well, I was sure wiped out as a shareholder of Washington Mutual. (Not that I’d like to see anyone else wiped out.) I can’t see how they figure which banks got TARP and which didn’t.

Amusing, n’est-ce pas? They have to call on a woman to speak truth to power?

Like other truth tellers before her.

Sherron Watkins.

Colleen Rowley.

Bunny Greenhouse.

Karen Kwiatkowski.

Women aren’t all saints, but maybe this is an indicator there haven’t been enough women running the show all around. We haven’t seen too many sitting in front of Congress defending the actions of the banksters, after all.

You’re probably right. However, if we see the usual reporting pattern emerge, she’ll probably be doing a few news shows. (I know she’s been on Maddow’s show several times.) If that happens, the clip(s) will likely show up on the InterToobs. It then becomes our responsibility to 1: Make the video(s) go viral and 2: Contact our (alleged) representatives and demand that they address her concerns. I know I sound like a broken record here, but Congress needs to be dunned, browbeaten and otherwise pressured on this whole bank bailout heist. Don’t take no for an answer.

…call for shareholders in those institutions to be “wiped out”.

It seems pretty obvious to anyone who wants to truly fix the system that this is a key point. Shareholders took a bet on investing in these companies. Since they’ve failed, the shareholders must lose their shirts. In order for the stock market to work, losses have to be part of the equation. Without that we have a “false” capitalist economy, more along the line of an economy where the government props up everything. If I’m not mistaken, that turned out to be a fatal flaw in the Soviet Union’s economy. You can’t privatize the profit and socialize the losses, that creates the moral hazard everyone warns about where there’s no incentive to be careful in what risks one takes.

Coleen continues to speak truth to power. She ran (albeit unsuccessfully) for Congress against our publicly invisible multi-term unrepresentative. She is part of an active peacemaking community. She blogs from time to time on HuffPost, mostly about civil liberties. She has speaking engagements about same. Not unlike living in an abusive relationship, which is what happened at work after Coleen blew the whistle, one can decide to go underground to stay out of harm’s way, or one can stand firm and keep blowing the whistle. Bless her for that.

Good Morning Jane and Firedogs,

allow me to join the chorus of Warren fans –

her comments about Japan and “a lost decade” echo Ian Welsh’s commentary from last summer

Why doesn’t Obama give her Geitner’s job.

We need more people like Elizabeth Warren and Sheila Bair to stand up and call bullshit.

…there haven’t been enough women running the show all around.

There certainly aren’t! There should be 50%, shouldn’t there? That’s what Michele Bachelet did in Chile, half of her Cabinet was female, half male. Seemed like a plan to me. But Bachelet is a rather amazing person.

Mornin’, pups. Gigi’s home from the vet and my missing in action little orange stray showed up just before picking Gigi up Friday. Life is good.

WMNF aired part of an interview with William Greider this morning (damn, another book to order.) I’m waiting for a reply with a link to the interview. He pretty much echoes Warren’s recommendations. With Bill Black calling out the frauds committed by the banksters on Moyers Friday night the alternative voices to the status quo voices of the administration are rising to the surface. David Harvey on DN! Thursday was equally informative.

Tie in any future Warren videos with the video of William Black’s interview on Bill Moyers Journal. The scales will fall from the public’s eyes, hopefully Obama’s as well.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/jour…..watch.html

My problem with Chile is that when the new Constitution was written the military’s power within the country was made even more solid.

oooh yeah, they both speak with such rational common sense – anyone can follow what they are saying

Good Morning Jane and Puppies.

The last thing I expected to see this morning – some good news for a change.

I LIKE this Elizabeth Warren’s style and substance. Lets hope Geithner and his boss listen up and think through this whole wretched mass of problems s’more before deciding they can consider their job well and truly launched.

She makes sense even to this common ordinary citizen. Good on her for speaking out.

A couple of things crossed my mind while reading this.
1. The free market is much like Darwinian evolution. Sucessful companies thrive and failures die off. If we must maintain these banks (and the associated executives), can we put them in a museum at least next to the flightless bird exhibit.
2. In order for the fit to be selected to survive, the market (individual tock investers) must have a sufficiency of information to rate chances for success. To the extent that recent changes in Mark-to-market distort or hide that information, then the market will be that much less efficient.

Can you imagine what would have happened to Citi stock if their 10K auditors had included this statement? “Due to certain transactions in the derivative markets, the company has taken on a risk that is incalculable in both scope and probability. We have no idea what would constitute an adequate reserve for contingencies or, due to the opaque nature of that market, how to determine a safe level of reserves. We are therefore unable to express an opinion as to the integrity of the financial statements or to the surviveability of the company.” Citi, meet dodo.

Keeping close track, all the while tending the tigers with your other paws.

You’re a classy fella Dragon. Happy to hear your brood’s tucked in and safe at last.

It’s a theory of mine, having worked in IT and a couple other male-dominated fields, that not enough women has been a real problem. Forgive the generalizations, but it’s difficult to quantify some of this stuff, it’s just anecdotal. You know the old gag that men don’t ask directions? It’s true, but in a different sense; they are far too caught up in competition, look only at the numbers, they don’t look at big picture stuff.

And they don’t have the ovarios to say, “Hey, wait a minute, how does this affect Joe SixPack? Explain it to me before we go any further, even if it means we don’t win this business over our competitors…”

You can see them in meetings, caught up in winning business from a competitor or wrapped up in helping a client so that they ultimately win more business, to the exclusion of thinking how this connects to and affects everything else. They’ve been so caught up in the letter that they missed the intent.

For example: Insurance is supposed to reduce risk, right? So how exactly did AIGFP really reduce risk? Explain it to me slowly. My manhood (or the lack thereof) won’t be offended.

Well, Warren sounds good, except for the Harvard part. The Ivy Leaguers are going to be our ruination.
The good news is that she only teaches at Harvard and was educated at he University of Houston and Rutgers Law.

Check out this relationship map on Muckety to see who Timothy Geithner is connected to in the grand scheme (conspiracy).

http://www.muckety.com/Council…..20.muckety

Note the “Map Tools” functionality at the far left (flash required). Click it then expand the view (then view full screen) and behold the Masters Of The Universe who have stolen our country – and their relationships to one another.

I didn’t know that. I had a teaching fellowship at the U. of Houston in 1969-70. She would have been a senior, while I was teaching freshmen, but I can imagine that she must have stopped in the hall and absorbed my words of wisdom. Kidding, of course.

Thanks. It’s all interrelated. Have to do what I can so that these little guys are safe and healthy. Some folks have children, I have felines. We’re all made of the same stuff, just put together differently. These fools threaten the safety and well-being of us all, regardless of our makeup. Black, Greider et al speak in plain terms, understandable by the masses. I see one of the main tasks for 2010 as dismantling the Wall Street Party in Congress. Unless and until we do that nothing will change.

No war but class war.

It often seems to me that women think more holistically, but I’m cautious about jumping to conclusions about that kind of thing. This can lead to people saying things like women aren’t as good at geometry, which I think is bullshit. Also it’s hard to sort out how much of the differences are cultural vs. biological.

I prefer to charaterize competence not by gender but by performance.
The performance by congress, the administration and the regulatory is consistent… Abysmal. They are extending the recession as Warren would point out if asked (I take that away from this post).
Capitalist, the super rich variety, are content to hold on the sidelines their assests to force government (that’s us)to shoulder the losses and the responsibility to fix what they broke. Plant those gardens folks they control the food and energy supply and we are getting a smaller share at a higher cost.
The corporate oligarchy let’s us elect the officials then they buy them with lobby reelection money. Ransom for a kingdom.

Rayne (25), I know so many exceptions, I hardly know where to begin. Same with your comment oldgold (26). Good sense is not sex-linked, and ivy degree holders are as varied as the number of those who hold them.

Among taxonomists, there’s often reference made to “lumpers” vs. “splitters”.

I think we do ourselves a disservice by blindly following either path.

NOTHING on this earth is that simple. imo, ymmv. no offence intended, but geez loueeezzzzzzzz!?!

i almost called this one “Shorter Charles Bowsher: Barney Frank, WTF?” but instead went with 15 years ago Charles Bowsher’s warning was ignored. Let’s not make the same mistake today.

bowsher kind of combines born and warren in one person because he warned about otc derivatives (years before born) and is warning today about mark-to-myth FASB rule changes.

I love it! Every prof’s dream. Enjoy! Why not?!

Whatever was put in place back in 1999 regarding 1930’s era G-S repeal/throw out it is plain to see now the locks were removed recklessly and with far too much “Iraq did 9/11″ kinds of WashingtonDC arrogant/ignorant certainty. American famed “shock and awe” has come home.

Like any classic “gold rush” greed won out over other needs and those who came late to the rush were the most reckless. Time for the “risk” part of the so called “wonder of American free markets” to be faced and absorbed by those who were quite willing to go after the “rewards” this esoteric and dubiously charted post 1999 era ushered in.

Time to take your medicine careless and heedless ones.

Elizabeth Warren is earning something called integrity and principled action. That is something WashingtonDC often prefers not to bother with.

Who will do the hard things? Those who can. Thank you Elizabeth Warren.

President Obama? You getting this?

sigh. yes. surely would appear so.

Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust

http://bigdanblogger.blogspot.com/

Huge news.

i’m with you on this one. having worked in male dominated fields, i’ve learned to really hate generalizations about women in the work place and i think it does a disservice to our male allies to do the same to them with generalizations about men. we can critique and criticize the work culture and how individuals (men and women) and a society still too enamored of patriarchy contribute to our problems without blaming men in general.

While Bill Black was the highlight of Moyers Friday night, Goodman and Greenwald verbalized for the great unwashed masses what we here all know, that the DC establishment and the rest of the world are two separate entities. Glenn’s description of their attitude was spot on.

I hope she heard and remembers your words of wisdom. But, more importantly,
I hope she doesn’t listen to a damn thing uttered on the Harvard Yard.

If Obama is on the wrong side of some things and on the short side of good things where does that place Obama?

With everybody else.

She’s terrific. Government should be run by women like Elizabeth Warren. We wouldn’t be in the mess we are in.

Hence my comment about the generalizations.

But I’ve sat through far too many meetings where I was the only woman or where represented a small percentage of the attendees, both in IT and in business meetings at a Fortune 50 company in their legal and financial departments, and then watched as they proceeded with complete disregard for any outcome save for that of some number. Any person outside the circle of power was ignored if they disrupted these massive circle jerks.

And I’ve personally killed a new product line on the verge of commercial release because I was the only person who asked the so-called stupid question: “Why are we making this product?” A chief engineer actually came up and whacked me after the meeting with his sub sandwich, laughing as he did so, wanting to know why nobody else had asked during the years and hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent on the product’s development.

I can see in my mind’s eye all too well the same scenario playing out in the offices of AIGFP — because it looked that way whenever I peeked in on the meetings that a Fortune 50 company’s officers had as they assessed the use of swaps to reduce risk. Not a single woman present, only the proverbial yes men.

Hammer at me if you’d like, but the statistics tell a story. Just how many women are there at AIGFP in a position of power, or at the helm of its parent, AIG?

Oh, and bigbrother (31), these guys all made decisions based on performance. That’s the very argument they’d use to rationalize their choices: We wrote this line of business using swaps to improve the performance of this portfolio over last year’s performance. It’s a favorite word. Ultimately, one group of people with some shared traits performed poorly because they only looked at performance.

squarely in the eye of the beholder.

This is excellent news! And along with EW’s post on Holder, it gives me hope that the Obama administration will have no choice but to adjust their approach to address the concerns of the public, the watchdogs, and the economists who have been kept away from their place at the table.

Welcome, Elizabeth Warren, to your marginalization.

i like this bit especially:

“I think the way the media works is they show the spectrum of opinion between the Democrats and the Republicans in Washington. Often that is very narrow. But the fact is, the majority of Americans fall outside of that opinion.” -Amy Goodman

who is showing the views of americans who want single payer? who is showing the views the americans who now reject both the republican and the democratic parties?

I’m not hammering at you. Having attended my full share of meetings, seminars and discussions in a variety of venues, I can unequivocally state that among fellow scientists, board members, educators, farmers, you name it, my experience has been very different from yours. There was no discernible link, at least that I could detect, but then my grad training was in ethology. Would that have skewed my view? Doubtful. As I said, ymmv, and I truly mean it. Maybe IT people are unusual. Then again, we raised one and know him up close and personal – there’s not a sexist bone in his body, sweet fella. Yeah, I know. Rawther small sample size, special case, quite unique actually. ;->

Geithner: Awww, Girlz are no fun!
Summers: Yeah, they’re always trying to ruin our play by tellin’ us that our game iz too dangerous!

p.s. glad to hear about the tigers.

There IS a difference between men and women — and it is a sliding scale to be sure, but make no mistake about it: We.Are.Not.The.Same. Frankly, that’s the whole point.

While the needs for these differences in humans are decreasing in this modern world, the differences go way back to the very beginnings of sexual reproduction as opposed to asexual reproduction.

There is much to be discussed about what the functional differences are. But it is total fantasy to think men and women are the same.

How we use our intelligence to recognize what the differences really are and to minimize the effect of these differences is our challenge.

Rayne is right.

Any person outside the circle of power was ignored if they disrupted these massive circle jerks.

That’s the basic problem in K-12 education too, Rayne.

hee hee, your sample size is microscopic even compared to mine. are we having fun yet?

Larry Summers, misogynist-in-chief will fire her.

He can’t. She’s there by virtue of the House Oversight Committee, not Obama.

You haven’t been a woman on Wall St.

So he’ll get the House Oversight Committee to fire her. No problem for the old boys network.

My personal life philosophy: You can laugh, or you can cry…So you might as well laugh.

I think that the bottomline here is that we’re going to have to have more than Warren calling it by its name to fix this problem.

As the new major shareholders in the biggest firms in the financial industry, we need to demand and see more diversity in thought at the tops of these organizations. And as shareholders we need to have different expectations about performance.

Frankly, we need to have more conversations about performance with regard to outcomes for STAKEholders, not SHAREholders.

As Einstein said, A problem cannot be solved by the same state of consciousness which created it. There’s going to have to be a change of mindset, and one of the easiest ways to effect this is change the heads.

And yes, this means adding more heads influenced by estrogen.

no, i haven’t, but you have no idea what i have experienced. and that’s not really the point anyway.

if you claim that we have no male allies anywhere, i disagree with you. if you claim they exist but deserve to be lumped into negative generalizations about men anyway, i disagree with you.

edit to add: if you think men haven’t been calling out the financial bs, see my diary on charles bowsher.

I’m not talking about whether there’s a difference or not. Of course, there are many differences. Rayne was addressing a specific realm of behavior, and I’ll stand by my words also, no hostility intended, simply a difference of opinion. In a narrow field, maybe there would be lines that could be discerned. Not in the broad spectrum I personally have encountered over decades.

I found out last night that Larry Summers was instrumental in runnung Cornel West out of Harvard.

-G

in reading Glenn’s article – what happened to Born and what happened to that young woman at Harvard are so disgustingly similar, one could simply use ’strikethrough’ on the names

well said. i’ll take a spirited discussion over a fight any day.

Question of the way the group works in aggregate.

Thank you selise! Bingo!

You’re right; I remember that. So he’s a racist as well as a misogynist. Actually, I think he’s more motivated by power than either of those, and my guess is that neither Mack nor West would buckle to his highness.

What you said.

Oh Adie, I wasn’t directing my comments to you or anyone else in particular, I hope you realize that. I was just addressing the problem in general.

Suggest your experience surely was deeply affected by the realm in which you worked, and the social makeup of the times. It must have been a pressure cooker for you. I commend you for surviving in fine good spirits and enhancing the Lake immeasurably. ;->

yep. me too. no problem mon, er, ma’am ;->

just curious. Can we all agree Larry Summers is a repulsive hoomin bein’?

I am just glum as a fucker this weekend. From seeing video of Pakistani Taliban lashing a 14 year old girl to news of gays getting executed in Baghdad to video footage of a Zimbabwe prisoner looking like a death camp survivor to the new drumbeat for war on Iran to the spate of shootings in the US.

It’s all a Goddamn mash of a mess.

-G

Not a pressure cooker, just good hard work. And I don’t need your dismissive pity.

The facts are that women do not get paid or promoted comparably to men, moreso on Wall St, but clearly very widespread. And I hear it’s worse than ever on Wall St. now, as I am told that most of the senior women have been fired. But I don’t have any stats so take it for what its worth.

t’warnt dismissive pity. ouch. me either, back t’other way.

it’d be a cold day indeed….

This will be interesting, if it happens; the firing of the CEOs. As Black said in Moyer’s Journal, if these people are replaced, they can’t continue the cover-up.
Warren or not, I don’t think Obama has the will to uncover the grave beetles in the financial system…and Geithner and Summers sure don’t want to as they have been complicit in this whole thing.

She seems to be in a David and Goliath situation.

Yes, I reread what you wrote and my reaction was too harsh. Apologize.

My point is that what I care about is pay and promotion, not the day-to-day personal interactions, which I found just fine.

if these people are replaced, they can’t continue the cover-up.

It depends on how far down the chain they fire. I’m slogging my way thru a book on the BCCI scandal, and the coverup had a deep team.

of course there are differences, but it doesn’t follow that those differences explain why important questions were not asked in rayne’s meetings (or why there were few women at aigfp) any more than it follows that those differences explain why there are so few women in physics grad departments.

in other words, i fail to see why it’s ok to reject the generalizations larry summers made about women but not the generalizations being made about men in this thread.

The harder the edge, the more ostracized one risks becoming. Never mind the facts. That’s completely irrelevant.

It has been my observation for quite some time that business people in general – men and women – are really not that bright. They’re not innovative or creative, they’re certainly not bold, and their so-called accomplishments are often quite dubious. And because of the group think (read: circle jerk) thing that goes on, the idiocy becomes self-reinforcing. Sorta like what’s going on in the White House right now.

generalizations being made about men in this thread.

Because the evidence, i.e. women’s pay & promotion, supports the generalizations.

Have to say that I now look at Obama as a nice man and talented politician but one who public persona as president is primarliy concerned with tone and demeanor.

He has many skills, but his view as to what structurally needs to change in the economic and finacial world is fairly minor. I still hold out a slight hope that he will see the error in his choices of advisors and cabinet choices but the obvious thing is that he probably does think along similar lines as Summers, Geithner, Gates, Holbrooke etc.

Thank you. I do think we can get along. I know zilch of your field. I have great respect for you and your opinions. That’s not pity and it’s not simpering, petty stroking or any such thing. peace? please.

“As the new major shareholders in the biggest firms in the financial industry, we need to demand and see more diversity in thought at the tops of these organizations. And as shareholders we need to have different expectations about performance.”

This requires that we place unrelenting pressure on Congress to conduct full-blown hearings. Anything less in unacceptable.

They probably “fire down the chain” alot farther than they did at the beginning of this looting. Ya think?

Because the evidence, i.e. women’s pay & promotion, supports the generalizations.

then please spell it out slowly, step by logical step, for me. because i don’t see it.

(i agree about women’s pay and promotion – they suck – what i don’t see is how those facts lead to the generalizations being made here about men.)

Summers’ time,
And the bailouts come easy.
Geithner’s spinning,
Bonus figures still high.

Your hedge fund’s rich
And your speaker fees massive.
So hush, regulators,
Don’t you spy.

One of these mornings
Phil Gramm will cut a plea, singing.
Then you’ll hop a jet
Bound for Paraguay.

But till that morning
Ain’t’a nothing will shame you
With top party leaders standing by.

Oh, more evidence about the different reactions of men vs. women is that the Enron whistleblowers were women.

Getting into the whole male vs. female thing is divisive. I’m here to tell you that there are stand-up girls and guys, and there are asshole girls and guys. In my mind, separating by gender is like separating by race, etc.

Example: William Black, Elizabeth Warren. Or: Eric Cantor and Michele Bachmann.

A good person is a good person. An asshole’s an asshole. It really isn’t anymore complicated than that. Nor can we afford this sort of splintering right now. The stakes are to F-n high.

you have company in our household, pretty much including everyone there-in, both sexes. thank you.

Don’t need stats, just need to look at the lawsuits and arbitration.

Morgan Stanley has been but one of the problem outfits. Their practices affected thousands of women, and this is just one firm.

How about Smith Barney?

Or Merrill Lynch?

But I suppose I am being imprudent and irrational and overgeneralizing again to point this out. Note that these three examples also came to fruition under the Bush administration. Can you imagine how bad the situations had to be for these cases or findings to be for them to emerge under Bush? Even stacked arbitration boards didn’t absolve the firm(s) in question.

We should also be asking as we rip these firms apart to start over whether the good old boys network reinforced the problem as they circled up the wagons and asked for bailout monies. It’s not gone noticed, but it’s going without comment that these firms are being allowed to continue their ways.

Geithner and Summers both could have said something about cutting losses the shareholders and cleaning house, but they’re both products of the same environment, living inside the same groupthink reinforced by testosterone. It’s about time somebody like Warren came along and kicked them out of the circle jerk.

My itsy bitsy knowledge of the firings that have happened to date is that they have been primarily the people who would not go along with the dicey schemes.

Hadn’t heard that one…

Seconded.

! ;->

Even leaving aside his policies or lack thereof, i find Summers hugely repulsive. He is a fat slob, at least so appears in pictures (maybe he just photos badly?).

Waaaay back in the day when bank trust departments were serious about fiduciary responsibility, there was a story that one of the leading lights had said, Never trust your money to a fat man.

The theory being that if said fat man couldn’t take care of himself, he was not going to be a good steward of your assets.

I think of that every time I see Summers’ porcine puss.

a teensy concession: maybe, just maybe, bidness people are “different”?

As I hypothesized about Summers, it’s probably more about power maintainence than misogyny or racism. People in power seem to think they can maintain it better if they promote people who are just like them.

So to selise’s point about how does it happen despite the fact that there are many great men around, my hypothesis is because that’s how the men in power think they can keep their monopoly.

Got to hop. Going to get a tour of the local organic farm.

I think he’s on the Rush Limbaugh fitness regimen.

Nah! Just a goll durn minute! I know LOTSA very nice fat people! Only I wouldn’t call them porcine or fat. I doubt I’d refer to their weight at all in normal civil conversation.

Warning: the above statement is a bridge too far.

Fire me at will, for gross insubordination!

Deduction and Induction

more here.

One more thing before you go. Well two, actually:

1) My comments about divisiveness notwithstanding, you’re right about pay and rank being unequal. This situation must be corrected. The focus must always be about solving problems. Whomever is best equipped to do that in a given situation gets the gig. Period. That will most certainly level the playing field over time.

2) Pick up some fresh vegetables while you’re at the farm. mmmmm….fresh vegetables…

i think you’re asking me to quit? if so, ok i give up… at least for today.

Don’t quit. Nooooooo…… I was just following the thread. You seem to be supporting my point of view. Don’t quit. Noooooooo……

Well, maybe this and this will give some more insight to Summers.

Your comment,

The focus must always be about solving problems. Whomever is best equipped to do that in a given situation gets the gig. Period.

about a meritocracy is amenable to me. But who’s going to write the problem statement?

Because for too long people of a certain group and specific groupthink have not only been measuring the performance of problem solvers, they’ve been the ones writing the problem statement.

Try it on for size: The problem is…

Obviously Warren thinks part of the problem is shareholders and their inability to accept that the banks are worthless. Summers and Geithner obviously think the problem doesn’t include this. So who’s going to write the problem statement we all work from?

i do agree with you. but i thought you were asking me to stop arguing about it?

regardless, sometimes i get tired of arguing (yeah, i know you’re going to find that one hard to swallow. but it’s true). i just wrote a diary on a really cool guy who is also blowing the whistle so i don’t get where all the anti-men thing is coming from.

probably really do need a break. not your doing.

I take offense at your characterization that ‘fat’ people are untrustworthy. Being fat sometimes is not about ‘taking care of oneself’ but a matter of previous childhood abuse, parental neglect, and a variety of other problems that are personal for that person – but have nothing to do with their work performance.

Just another generalization about folks based on ???

klynn, have you read prof. foland’s diary on larry summers? (long time fdl commenter and also did boots on the ground let’s lobby congress about fisa 3 years ago)

This post worked liked a Rorschach.

So who’s going to write the problem statement we all work from?

warren and bowsher?

Elizabeth Warren is one of the few Establishment voices that can say “consumers’ rights” without gagging on her caviar. She knows the banking system, warts and all.

She is a knowledgeable and vocal critique of the 2005 bankruptcy “reform”, which Democrats and Republicans alike used to gather the king’s taxes for the credit card companies and their issuing banks. She is a tireless critic of the way card issuers game the system by incorporating in GOP-friendly states, whose legislatures write laws to let them charge exorbitant fees and interest of up to 30%. They then market their cards nationally, often intentionally seeking poor credit risks, because their business model’s profits depend on “earning” default rates of interest and fees.

Obama should have hired her before Congress. Now he can sit in the stalls while she sings a song that will not be music to the econ boys whispering in his ear. If Rahm and Summers weren’t as power hungry as Cheney, if Obama has more moral courage than our most despised president, perhaps he’ll listen to more voices than the whisperers and act on their good advice. That’s what all those brains are for.

Yep. I am a fan of Professor Foland’s comments, especially over at EW’s and also a fan of that diary post. Thanks for linking to it, both times.

Posted my links because some of the links in PF’s post were now coming up as errors for me.

Well that would certainly be a lot more diverse than Summers and Geithner…

I have always believed that the banksters are sick, with testosterone poisoning.

Good lyrics! Sings well!

Interesting discussion, including the digression on men and women.

I’ve loved Elizabeth Warren since I first read her op-eds in the NYT more than a decade ago. She gets it, and she’s brilliant. And moral.
And what Earl said. You might want to check out archives of her blog posts at TPMCafe – I don’t think she’s writing it since being appoited to her current job.

But, re: the digression – when I read Jane’s post, my second thought was; oh great, now how will they justify ignoring her without making it clear that it’s because she’s a woman?
I’m not going to make an all-men v all-women generalization; suffice it to say that I have seen way too many examples of male lawyers completely ignoring female lawyers, dismissing their arguments, and often, taking up with approval the same arguments made by a male with no acknowledgment that the same proposal was already made by a woman. (I’m not talking in court here. But I’ve seen some horrors in court, too, that could only be explained by the attitude of one or more men toward women.)
I will say that lawyers are super-competitive, and that is likely part of the explanation vis-a-vis Adie’s and Rayne’s experiences.

And that this generalization is less applicable to younger men, under 35, say.
Also, of course, I’m in Texas, where truly, certain sexist verbiage and attitudes have lingered much longer than in the Northeast (where men may simply have learned to hide their true attitudes better, dunno).

But, yea Elizabeth Warren!

Let’s do plan a way to gin up vocal support that the president won’t be able to ignore.

OXDOWN!!

Heh. Laughing too hard to write anything deep about that. Conjures up an image of Tom Cruise and Jay Mohr slogging it out for clients in “Jerry Maguire,” after Jerry is let go and tries to peel away clients from former employer.

Appreciate the chuckle greatly.

Didn’t Obama just say today that “Breaking rules must have consequences”?

Oh, that was in regards to North Korea…who likely didn’t sign onto those rules in the first place.
I guess when it comes to the Financial industry and the Bush Administrations violations of our Constitution this doesn’t apply.

Oh, and how about that Rush Limbaugh violating the “sexual and excretory references” dictum of the FCC at will…during daylight hours. He said that British PM Gordon Brown might get “anal poisoning” from his slobbering all over Obama. Pretty disgustingly clear. Will Rush, who holds an FCC 3rd Class License, and has sworn to obey FCC regulations, be punished?

Rush is broadcast on 600 stations nationwide, and at the $30,000 fines levied per station for such things as Bono’s unscheduled slang reference that had nothing to do with sex, and Janet Jackson’s “Wardrobe Malfunktion”…neither of which was really under the “control” of the broadcasters…you’d think that the FCC would go after Limbaugh…who is doing this intentionally!

Instead they target tiny non-commercial stations for playing after 10 PM, with warnings aforehand, some punk song in which the lyrics are barely intelligible and the reference was “Makin’ Bacon”…because some Conservative activist complained.

Thanks, Jane. Elizabeth Warren is the only Obama administration official that I trust in any aspect of financial regulation against the friendly takeover of D.C. by Goldman Sachs, etal.

A-men, sister.

the women in this country in positions of power … born, elvin hayes’ sister (Bunny something or another) that came down on the no-bid contracts, Rowlings of the FBI, Watkins of Enron, Warren, etc. etc, etc. … have so much more courage and possess much more moral clarity than the men in positions of power.

Z

I think this is about conflict of interest. Geitner and Summers have many connections to these companies, and when they leave government they will have many more. Just imagine if one of them was the Judge in a case between you and those companies. Would they even have to be asked to recuse themselves, or would they just do it automatically because the appearance of conflict of interest is so obvious.

Thank goodness for Elizabeth Warren. I worry that she will be attacked by both AIG / Wall Street companies, and their past andor future CEO’s who are currently “regulating” them.

Damn straight…accountability consequences. Maybe they are serious about restoring some faith.

Just a wee bit troubling when the same people who created the problems are the ones put in power to resolve those problems. wee bit troubling

A big part of the Moyers discussion on Friday night was that (wow) regulators should be regulating. The comparison was to the saving and load debacle when the regulators then acted with effectiveness and the now when the regulators are the wolves guarding the hen house. Good for Warren: brave and articulate.

West was pretty vocal in backing Stiglitz for Treasury Secretary to Obama. Like a lot of people here, he was right. Obama needs to correct this, shall I say, oversight?

More lyrics (must be the spring air), this time to the tune of “Who Will Buy This Beautiful Morning?”…

Who will buy this toxic portfolio?
Such a steal, at cents on the buck.
Not quite real – less butter than oleo,
Less sirloin than a low-grade chuck.

Buy these bonds – we’re taking all comers.
Triple-A till day before last.
Fully legal (thank Larry Summers)
And regulated (though half-assed).

Who will vy for all of this paper?
Banksters earned it such a bad rap.
Who will tie it up with a ribbon
And put it in a box
Buried under rocks
And labeled “Highly Toxic Crap”?

thanks for the link. i sent her a love letter thank you note.

I agree that women have been a lot of the whistle blowers. Women aren’t saints, though they are more concerned with community than men. But they haven’t been let into the game so they are just not part of that long built up old boys club and that is to the good. No mistake about it its an old boys club we need to break up. Platitudinous, plutocratic, patriarchs preaching morality…moral hazard to the penurious but exempting themselves at all times. moral hazard only applies to peons, minions, workers. These guys think they enrich the world by enriching themselves. big daddy will provide

Anyway women ought to get organized around this and support Warren and Brooksley Born and Shelia Bair and all these women who have tried to do the right thing and some how could see the danger the masters of the universe couldn’t see. We need to be contesting this territory. Men still feel they should rule finance and that it is a testosterone sport thing with them. We can’t afford (quite literally) this uneconomic system anymore. Any good housewife could have figured out how nuts this system was. Only a group mesmerized by their their own
cleverness and driven by greed—nay saying women spoil the fantasy
Women need to be a bigger presence in the public financial sphere. I’ve seen Warren on tape, she is excellent right on the money.

Ironically, the President himself is the one who put my attitude concerning this into his statement about the North Korean launch, though it’s not what he meant, It’s what I mean.

“Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something.”

Yeh, I had one Daddy and I don’t need anymore. Time for the women to go to work. Jane and Christy should be added to the list. But the old dinosaurs will start to screech. Yesterday on “This Week”, David Frum and George Will continually talked over, made fun of, and condescended to Arianna Huffington in her full bore attack on the evil Smeagols, Geithner and Summers.

Yes, women can buy into the boys club. Look at Condi. A not so good woman is Cristina Romer who looks like the an evil fairy godmother as she chirps her crappy economic theories on the TV. But by and large women really get bored fast with the whole greed is good deal. I left Hollywood to start my own movie related business. I was told over and over when I was transferred from NYC to LA that it was not what I knew, but who I knew. I was told that just because I knew a lot about Shakespeare and had advanced degrees in film, that would not get me as far along as schmoozing at Morton’s every Monday. So I moved to Montana to prove them wrong. I’m doing just fine, thank you very much.