WyBlog

Yes I'm afraid of Elizabeth Warren, and you should be too

My favorite feminist is at it again, espousing her "women should rule the world" line of claptrap. In particular she says only a woman is qualified to head up Barry's new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. And of course she has a particular woman in mind — Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren.

Warren is clearly the frontrunner for the job. But according to PunditMom, Obama is "afraid" to appoint her because Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and his Wall Street buddies do not approve.

To be sure Elizabeth Warren is a lefty, progressive wet dream of a regulator.

Warren, a Harvard Law school expert on bankruptcy law, has been the head of the TARP oversight panel and a financial superhero for her ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound while at the same time explaining credit default swaps and the economic meltdown in plain English!

Well what PunditMom calls "plain English" Megan McArdle, who actually worked with Warren, calls "sloppy scholarship". Specious assumptions, statistical tomfoolery, drawing conclusions from incomplete data, it's all there, exposed for the world to see. Warren starts with her ideologically driven conclusion and works backward from there picking and choosing "facts" to suit her chosen narrative. She's Michael Bellesiles in a skirt.

Elizabeth Warren opposes Payday Lending (she labels it "usury") when in reality it's a viable option for small short-term loans. Her views on credit interest rates in particular are troubling. Limiting what a bank can charge will directly lead to limits on who can obtain credit.

Not to worry! Warren is all for those pesky racial and gender quotas Dodd-Frank establishes. There we have another anti-market element. Some people are not credit-worthy, and certainly not at 12%. But like the train wreck with resulted from the Community Reinvestment Act (curiously FinReg ignores Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) Warren would demand loans be made when they would almost certainly be unprofitable.

But hey, who needs profit when all the banks are nationalized? Yes, Elizabeth Warren is on record espousing the nationalization of the entire banking industry. No wonder the SEIU and Big Labor are so enamored with her! When the government takes over the banks all the employees will automatically become union members.

The whole premise behind CFPA is the assumption that consumers are too stupid to read their credit card agreements. Sorry, but I don't buy that. Yeah they're boring, but they're important. Turn off American Idol and read.

Besides, a lack of information is not the reason too many Americans are up to their eyeballs in debt. Fixing that problem via regulatory levers would require draconian restrictions. And to what end? Already banks are eliminating free checking. Why? Because Congress decided that people who were too stupid to balance their checkbook needed protection from overdraft fees.

Does anyone really believe that the banks won't find a way to recoup the losses they're sure to realize under Warren's regulatory thumb? Oh yeah, I forgot. She's gonna nationalize the banks. That'll solve all our problems.

Posted at 16:18 by Chris Wysocki   [/democrats]   | Trackback | Perm Link |
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