Fighting to Protect Consumers, by Elizabeth Warren

[jefferson_dem]

Fighting to Protect Consumers
Posted by Elizabeth Warren on September 17, 2010 at 06:00 AM EDT

Over the past several weeks, the president and I have had extensive conversations about the vital importance of consumer financial protection.

The president asked me, and I enthusiastically agreed, to serve as an Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He has also asked me to take on the job to get the new CFPB started -- right now. The president and I are committed to the same vision on CFPB, and I am confident that I will have the tools I need to get the job done.

President Obama understands the importance of leveling the playing field again for families and creating protections that work not just for the wealthy or connected, but for every American. The new consumer bureau is based on a pretty simple idea: People ought to be able to read their credit card and mortgage contracts and know the deal. They shouldn't learn about an unfair rule or practice only when it bites them -- way too late for them to do anything about it. The new law creates a chance to put a tough cop on the beat and provide real accountability and oversight of the consumer credit market. The time for hiding tricks and traps in the fine print is over. This new bureau is based on the simple idea that if the playing field is level and families can see what's going on, they will have better tools to make better choices.

If the CFPB can succeed at leveling the playing field, we can go a long way toward repairing a gaping hole in the budgets of millions of families. But nobody has ever thought or argued that the consumer bureau can fix everything. Lost jobs, stagnant incomes, rising costs for college, dwindling retirement savings -- there's a lot of work to be done.

When she was 16, my grandmother, Hannie Reed, drove a wagon in the Oklahoma land rush. Her mother had died, so she was up front with her little brothers and sisters bouncing around in the back. When I was growing up, she talked about life on the prairie, about marrying my grandfather and making a living building one-room schoolhouses, about getting wiped out in the Great Depression. She was hit with hard challenges throughout her life, but the moral of her stories was always the same: she would solve her problems one at a time by pulling up her socks and getting to work.

It's time for all of us to pull up our socks and get to work.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/09/17/fighting-protect-consumers

[lamp_shade]

1. Big First Rec. Thanks.

[fasttense]

2. Well, if I had socks I would pull them up.

[impik]

3. Yes! That's my president. Welcome, Miss Warren :)

[ClarkUSA]

4. "The president and I are committed to the same vision on CFPB... "

"... and I am confident that I will have the tools I need to get the job done."

:woohoo:

[JTFrog]

5. K&R

[ProSense]

6. In her own words.

Excellent!

[ProSense]

7. Unrecs for Elizabeth Warren's statement?

:rofl:

[geek tragedy]

8. She's evil now that she's working with the evil man in the White House. nt

[Mass]

10. She cant be trusted. She is not saying that Obama is evil.

[ProSense]

11. "Obama can redeem himself if he appoints Warren."

Statements like that have been thrown around a lot, and the reaction to Warren's appointment puts a lot of the over-the-top criticisms of the past several months into context.

Feingold was right, and it's not just teabaggers.

Q. What explains the difficult political climate for Democrats, considering that President Obama has implemented many policies he campaigned on?

A.“There are two primary reasons. One is the economy. Human nature is such that people are going to say, ‘I’m frustrated.’ That creates an environment that whoever is in office, whoever is doing anything, is potentially vulnerable to people being unhappy. There’s a second factor that’s more cynical. A conscious decision was made by certain groups to destroy this presidency the minute it started. People say it was the health care bill – no, it wasn’t. I go to every county every year and hold a town meeting. Within days of the president being sworn in, I had people showing up at my town meeting with hats on, with tea bags coming out, saying this is going to be socialism.”

<...>

Q.Has the president squandered any opportunities?

A.“I don’t look at it that way. What I look at is there are so many challenges at once, there are so many things you can do. The most important things –- we’re getting at the job situation and the recovery. There’s a lot of blood given on that. This health care thing was a courageous and important thing to do, but it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever seen a president do. The one thing I think he did squander an opportunity was the mistake of what he did with Afghanistan. It was a very bad decision. He should not have doubled down on Afghanistan. That is going to hurt him more than these other things.”

<...>

[Kdillard]

9. This is terrific and I look forward to seeing her vision implemented.

[Uzybone]

12. KnR

[Parker CA]

13. K&R! Absolutely terrific news!!

[mkultra]

14. I can see now why the DU downer league is disguted at this appointment

She is clearly a debutant.

[Moosepoop]

15. I didn't see this before I posted the same thing :(

I did check, but I didn't see it. Hope you don't mind Ms. Warren's words getting out there again! Anyway, K & R! :patriot: