She's raised her presence because she isn't afraid to step on the toes of the rich, and refuses to back down her level of speech; she says what she thinks and doesn't sugarcoat anything. She's fair and honest. If we had 99 more like her, I imagine our country would be much better off, regardless of their political affiliation.

Warren 2016

You must understand that the president has NO power to rectify the situation.. very little at all.
He/She is NOT a dictator or monarch to rule by decree.

Congress runs this country... NOT the President.
Moe Howard could be president and with a super majority he'd be nothing more than a figure head... as was Clinton.
A reformer President with an antagonistic Congress will go NO WHERE.
What is needed is a new party to replace the majority of the two sets of idiots and actually return this country to the people.
That doesn't exist at this stage in a viable form.
Liz Warren knows this..

which is why she has REPEATEDLY said she is NOT running for president.
NO ONE with any sense would until THAT criteria is met.

Then Obama should Veto it, right, Otherwise Obama is only for the Rich also right?

President Obama absolutely needs to veto this bill. If not, I hope the entire country wakes up and realizes both parties put this on the American people, both parties are to blame for enriching the already super wealthy at the expense of normal people.

One party panders and does corporate America's bidding while the other is a wholly-owned subsidiary.

Nope sorry, she knows how to tune her rhetoric to appeal to the angry uneducated middle class, but she's just as much of a peacocking liar as any other senator.

It's a fact that this particular regulation does not affect ibank strategy, since who's insuring them doesn't make a difference when there's a guaranteed bailout at the end. It's also a fact that the most harmful economic activity since 2010 has been the Fed's ridiculously shortsighted QE which effectively forces investors into riskier and riskier assets just to stay ahead of inflation, which has inflated a massive cross-industry equity bubble all while the underlying causes of the mortgage crash still haven't been fixed (public debt restructuring, consumer spending).

If Warren truly cared more about our long-term economic stability and less about maximizing the short-term profits of corporations, she would use her considerable influence to reveal the QE sham and bring about the market correction that the growth of our economy has been waiting for and depends on - which is unpopular with politicians because none of them are honest enough to publicly state that our markets need to get a lot worse again before they can get fundamentally better.

Instead, she's doing the media circuit trying to drum up support from more unthinking rabble to her willfully ignorant, deeply harmful cause. This woman is a menace to everyone who wants to live with financial security more than a year in the future. It's a shame that duplicitous shills like her get support so easily, I wish there was some econ101 in the k-12 curriculum...

You voted for Palin, right?

Nope, I only vote in local elections because I'm not deluded enough to believe my vote makes a difference at the national level. But if I did, I'd write-in for Homer Simpson, who is a better choice than any Democrat, who are better choices than most Republicans.

But thanks for your assumption, very entertaining stuff!

I'd vote Palin over Biden any day of the week. She is smarter, more accomplished & more honest.

Come on guys! Talk about Palin and another article with Cheney is not helping my PTSD.

The fact that only 40% of the vote went to McCain can be blamed on Palin; her presence on the ticket scared away more voters than it attracted. Anyone who actually voted for HER was trying to make a statement. Very few voters actually considered her a serious candidate for the presidency.

Agree. McCain (and Warren) continue to be of the very few that actually speak sanely from the cesspool that is Washington DC.

I will admit to voting for Palin. She had some solid credentials as the gov of Alaska. Obama was just a community organizer and his total lack of experience with anything has created years or unnecessary problems for particularly the middle class.

Do you not pay attention to her or do you just get your argument ready? She's spoken out against quantitative easing for years.

"the underlying causes of the mortgage crash still haven't been fixed (public debt restructuring, consumer spending)."

That's when you lost any credibility. How about personal responsibility for bankers? That's too difficult but you blame everyday people who are barely getting by for the collapse of the economy. Let me guess, you work in the finance industry. Sociopathic hypocrites.

Amen. But I gag every time someone refers to their paper empire as an "industry". These people make P.T. Barnum look like a prophet.

She's had the power to affect Fed policy for years and doesn't do so. Talk is cheap, and hand-wavy blame shifting is even cheaper.

Your last paragraph is incoherent word salad. I never blamed everyday people for the recession (did you somehow twist my stated fact that consumer spending has been pitiful since then into this?), and blaming a random selection of managers doesn't ameliorate the continuing repercussions of the bad policies that led to the recession. Most of what the shot callers were doing in the housing bubble was perfectly legal, and the gray area stuff (robosigning) wasn't what caused the bubble. Policy was.

The root of the problem is bad legislation and the people who write it.

That's why hypocritical legislators like Warren deserve all of the blame (she holds far more influence over fiscal policy than most other congressmen), and why the problem still isn't fixed.

I disagree with your assessment of her ability and power vs. her rhetoric. But your analysis is your analysis.

Consumer spending was not the problem. Consumer credit was a symptom of the larger problems that plague not just our economy but our society and culture.

Maybe I was unclear since you're misapplying what I'm trying to say.

Re: consumer spending, I'm saying that diminished consumer spending as a result of the recession is a major factor in why the current economy isn't fundamentally healthy, despite being propped up by shortsighted Fed action and fudged-to-meaninglessness employment numbers that prey on public sentiment and essentially just kick the can further.

I'm not blaming consumers for not spending, that's a result of the greater economic climate. What I mean to say is that the legislators who knowingly enact ineffective legislation and allow the revolving door to continue are the true criminals here, not the middle managers taking advantage of shady-but-not-illegal loopholes. And I have even less respect for the legislators who claim to be working for the people and then turn around and set their future on fire.

You're right on!

The finance "industry" is nothing but a leech on the actually productive members of society. They create nothing, of no value, at the direct cost of normal people who don't know they are being gamed.

401Ks, market panics, media sensationalism and constant inflation are just pressures created to force people into the system, and buy in to buyouts and the "too big to fail" mantra.

We should have let these banks, and their wealthy elite employees go broke and not bailed them out.

First, economists largely speculate what they think is likely to happen. If I learned one thing in Econ-101, it's that you can only predict what is likely to happen, and you can never know for sure. Of course, most economists are confident in their predictions, but they are often wrong. It's not unlike meteorology.

You can come in here and jargon everyone to death to show your superior knowledge, but calling people "unthinking rabble" or "uneducated" is pretty clear, and it sets you up as a person to be ignored, as does overuse of jargon.

You criticize Warren because she's not lecturing on advanced economics and regulatory law during an interview? That's petty. She's not talking to economists or lawyers, she's talking to people who, even among the educated, don't have an in-depth understanding of many things that affect their daily lives. There's nothing wrong with simplifying something to make it easier to understand. That's how you teach.

I'm not using big words or jargon. This is all easy stuff. And I don't care who listens to me either, I am fully aware of the impotence of anonymous internet comments and I'm one of the relatively few who will profit enormously when this bubble pops anyway.

But I absolutely disagree that she couldn't be more clear or less misrepresentative of this most-important aspect of politics in an interview. Her whole image is that of an economics-informed populist, and there's plenty of easy metaphors for whatever convoluted instrument you can imagine. The issue is that she has an interest in clouding the truth to make the current economic climate appear bright and sunny to the average reader, which is completely perpendicular to the truth. If you think this is all just speculation (informed by tested statistical analysis of over a hundred years of market data), then there's really nothing I can say.

Jargon and the designed complexity of the system are tools to obfuscate the truth.

First, the rhetoric that is most closely tuned to "the angry uneducated middle class" is that of the Tea Party. It is surprising that you did not know that considering the rest of your own rhetoric suggests that you are not unfamiliar with Tea Party positions.

Second, it matters very much who is insuring whom. As long as there is an implied insurance from the federal government, institutions that are too big to fail take risks without much of a down side. If they have to pay for insurance, and if the insurance is regulated to insure sufficiency, which is something that AIG did not have, then risks have a down side - risky behaviour incurs greater insurance costs. Weighed against profits, these costs reduce or, hopefully, eliminate the moral hazard of the tacit government backing.

Snort.

Notice how Fakeahontas Warren got her democrat co-hearts to vote against the bill in the house and then it comes to the senate she wimps out.
Warren's convictions are to her political career.

So you are advocating for a stock market crash as the most prudent way to fix the economy and you call us ignorant?? I would love to see the too big to fail corporations broken up and have true competition re-introduced into our economy but crashing it is not the answer.

You've either never taken algebra or just never bothered to read anything about our money system...

Yes, when markets are systemically overvalued to the point of reduced potential growth from misallocated investments, the only way to return to stability is to decrease the value of the overvalued assets. In this benign view they're called "market corrections," not crashes, but it's all the same to the uninformed investor who sits idly and watches their portfolio lose half its value. Which isn't quite so bad if your first expected withdrawal is in more than 10 years, buy and hold works on this principle.

Also, a market crash doesn't mean anything's going bankrupt. This time around, it'll likely be tech that's hit the worst anyway.

Your right about Warren and wrong about QE.

How so?

It really is populist rhetoric meant to appeal to a diminishing middle class with only a limited understanding of very complex problem. The fact that she frames things so simply should be the tipoff.

Things are simple- rich powerful people think they're better than the rest of us and deserve to manipulate the economy for their own gains. They don't need to ask our permission and do not welcome any challenges so therefore they shroud their actions in doublespeak, secrecy, and legal mumbo jumbo while redirecting the attention of the middle class to the immigration problem and unsustainable government that is taxing them!

You forgot the using race, gay tights, gun control, and moral righteousness to stir emotions of their Conservative Evangelical followers. A good example was the midterms!

Both sides use all of these tactics to obfuscate the truth of enriching the super wealthy. Don't enable by shedding blame to one side- this was a bipartisan effort, with Democrats controlling the Senate and Republicans controlling the House of Reps. Both houses of congress passed this bill. Both parties are for making the rich richer.

Things are simple- rich powerful people liberal Democrats think they're better than the rest of us and deserve to manipulate the economy government for their own gains. They don't need to ask our permission and do not welcome any challenges so therefore they shroud their actions in doublespeak, secrecy, and legal mumbo jumbo while redirecting the attention of the middle class to the immigration problem and unsustainable government that is taxing corporations who do more for them than the government!

FIFY

Joe, stop enabling. This is a bipartisan effort to enrich the super wealthy even more. Blaming just democrats or just republicans only allows the false dichotomy to continue.

I didn't say the Republicans weren't culpable, just that the mantra that Democrats are fighting for the little guy are false.

Absolutely, sorry for that! I just can't stand this whole "my party is right and yours is wrong," while both parties are selling the American public down the river.

No worries, I should have probably been more clear in my original post.

The only fair shake I've ever gotten in my whole life has been from the government. Student loans, state subsidized schools, consolidation loans, FHA mortgage, ACA, unemployment insurance, public health, social security... Corporations have stolen my bonuses, eliminated my pension, lied to me, laid me off and made promises they had no intention of keeping. No corporate executive has ever lost sleep worrying about me and mine. They couldn't care less about me or anyone that isn't in their country club and the only way they're letting my people into the country club is if we serve the meals or clean the toilets. Without the government to defend me I'd have nothing to fight them with. But that is exactly what you want, isn't it? All of us crawling to Republicans because Republicans control all the money. The Democrats are far from perfect- but they're all we have left that resembles a collective voice. Where I live we get good being thankful for what we have- even if it needs constant repair and is in sad need of a paint job. Hoping for perfect is about as likely as winning the lottery. But you'd know nothing about that, would you?

What I want is for no organization (corporations or government) to have that much hold over my life. The Republican party is just as bad as the Democrats, just in different ways.

Then, lead, follow or get out of the way! But make up your mind and stop being such dead weight- some of us have things to do and you're not making it any easier for us.

I do. I vote Libertarian which supports all of these goals.

Ever notice that there are no poor libertarians? Why do you suppose that is? Because they're just the radical right wing of the ruling class! They allow all the other aristocrats to look moderate. America is a meritocracy and libertarians are doing their best to turn it back into an aristocracy.

The fact that the banking industry has set up an overly complex system is the tip off that they are gaming the system. Every time I hear the comment "It's very complex" it usually means "I can't explain it". They don't understand their own system, other than to ensure they can lay blame elsewhere.

"It's very complex, you little people wouldn't understand it" is code for "OMG they're about to figure it out!?"

The fact that you think basic truths must be shrouded in faux complexity tips me off to more about you - than her.

Yeah, it's complex. Complex in the way a shell game is complex. Complex in the way any scam or magic trick is complex. There are many people who understand, with depth, the financial industry and know that you don't need a Phd to spell fraud.