Obama adviser, Elizabeth Warren, speaks at University of Kentucky

[groovedaddy]

(I attended this and she did a great job. We need more like her in the Obama administration! gd)

Elizabeth Warren, special assistant to President Obama, said the fine print in some financial documents is "like shrubbery that muggers can hide in," but she hopes a newly formed federal agency will make the industry more consumer-friendly.

"Consumers ought to be able to compare three or four credit cards, three or four mortgages," she said.

Warren, who also serves as special adviser to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and is a law professor at Harvard University, delivered the annual Chellgren Lecture at the University of Kentucky on Monday night.

In an address titled "Debt, Credit and the Middle Class," Warren pointed to data indicating that, over more than three decades, the percentage of disposable income Americans put toward savings has decreased, while their debt has increased. Home values have grown, but so has mortgage debt, and home equity as a share of home value has declined.

Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2011/04/19/1712662/obama-adviser-speaks-at-university.html#ixzz1JyCuLPYG

[dtotire]

1. How Was She Received? n/t

[groovedaddy]

4. Very receptive audience, academia well represented. There were tea partiers there

as evidenced by some folks I saw getting out of an suv with the tp bumper stickers. They weren't disruptive.
Q&A was done by writing down the questions. Then the Econ prof who served as MC reviewed them and then posed the ones he chose. He knows Dr. Warren and he is repub, which he acknowledged. It seemed to me and others, that he chose questions that seemed to be leaning in the rightward direction. Dr. Warren did a great job of responding to them.

[bertman]

2. She's such a treasure! Too bad she has no clout in D.C. REC. nt

[midnight]

3. I like that idea of comparison shopping... But how does one do that

for a mortgage? Especially ever time you apply for them to look at you they pull your credit score, which instantly drops your score.... That little mechanism must be removed....