Elizabeth Warren Announces Her Bid for Senate

This is hilarious..!

Elizabeth Warren talks about why she's running for the United States Senate.

Starring: Molly Erdman
Directed by: Brian Shortall
Written/Produced by: Eddie Geller
Edited by: Richard Klopfenstein

We Are Being Lied To - MoveOn Civic Action & The Other 98% Flash Mob

I participated in this action on Monday June 6th, if you look closely you can see me in the top left hand corner holding a piece of the letter "W" (see the still photo below)...

Earlier this week, our amazing members joined MoveOn in putting together a flash mob of concerned citizens standing on the steps of Federal Hall on Wall Street, with one simple message for financial elites: We Are Being Lied To.

Click on photo to enlarge

thanks to Dennis P. Osorio for the photo

MoveOn.org Queens Council Movie Event - "Plunder" with Director Danny Schechter on Wednesday May 4th

Click here to view these pictures larger

New Yorkers to Wall Street on May 12: Make Big Banks & Millionaires Pay

COALITION PLANS WEEK OF ACTION TO STOP BLOOMBERG’S BUDGET CUTS WITH TAXES ON MILLIONAIRES AND ENDING GIVEAWAYS TO BIG BANKS

National Movement Connects the Dots to NYC, Demands Reform and Fair Share in Taxes from Financial Sector
A growing coalition of community, labor, and progressive groups announced today plans for a week of events starting May 9^th, calling for Mayor Michael Bloomberg to end taxpayer-financed giveaways to Wall Street and ask for fair-share taxes from millionaires to mitigate his proposed budget cuts. The week of action will culminate in a major mobilization in Lower Manhattan on Thursday, May 12.

The coalition, uniting under the banner “Make Big Banks and Millionaires Pay” will contrast the corporate welfare, property tax giveaways, and seemingly endless local and national tax cuts enjoyed by the financial sector with Bloomberg’s proposed cuts to childcare, classrooms, public safety, and dozens of other services working New Yorkers rely on.

“The big banks wrecked our economy and are back to making billions in profits and lavish bonuses, while the rest of us are still cleaning up the mess they created,” said Mary Brosnahan, the Executive Director of the Coalition for the Homeless. “Now Bloomberg has a choice: ask Wall Street bankers to contribute their fair share to fixing New York City, rather than enacting devastating cuts to working families.”

The organizers promise more than a typical “rally” on May 12^th, with a day of diverse, creative actions across the downtown financial district. Michael Mulgrew, President of the United Federation of Teachers, said: “On May 12, tens of thousands of New Yorkers will descend on Wall Street, creating a giant school without walls throughout the financial district. Together, we will educate our city and expose the people and institutions that are destroying our jobs and our economy, and the politicians who are letting them get away with it.”

The week of actions coincides with a growing national movement by communities increasingly questioning the practices of the financial industry and fighting back against attacks on working people. “We are connecting the dots from the big banks that crashed our economy, destroyed millions of jobs and foreclosed on millions of family homes to the human impact here in the financial capital of our country, ” said Michael Kink, Executive Director of Strong Economy for All Coalition.

As the week of action approaches, organizers plan to release new data detailing the tax breaks and giveaways New York City doles out to the banking industry, as well as the effect of Wall Street-caused foreclosures on New York’s communities and tax revenue. “When New Yorkers see the skewed choices this city has made, it is no longer an abstraction,” added Kink. “Homeless shelters are bursting at the seams, and child care and senior centers are closing down -- not because we have gone broke, but because Bloomberg has chosen to spend hundreds of millions in subsidies for the people who need it least.”

The following community groups and unions have joined the May 12 coalition (list in formation):

Center for Children Initiatives
Center for Working Families
Citizen Action of New York
Coalition for the Homeless
Community Voices Heard
Housing Works
Make the Road New York
New York Communities for Change
New Deal for New York Campaign
Organization for a Free Society
Picture the Homeless
United Students Against Sweatshops
Urban Youth Collaborative
VOCAL-NY
1199 SEIU
SEIU 32BJ
CWA 1104
CWA 1180
CWA District 1
Professional Staff Congress – CUNY
United Federation of Teachers

Learn more at www.Onmay12.org
On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/OnMay12
On Twitter: http://twitter.com/onmay12

Wall Street's Free Ride - American Family Voices - YouTube

Here’s a new Web ad an organization, American Family Voices, just put up that does a great job of talking about this issue from the small business point of view...

Rich Bro/Poor Bro - Britehorn.com

Once upon a time there were two friends named Wall Street and Main Street and somehow or other their lives went in two drastically different directions.


Film by John T. Kramer. Starring Cory Sylvester, Josh Segovia, Betsy Stone, Niq Schwartz and Sherman Edwards.


http://www.britethorn.com

"Wall Street -The Untouchables" Exposing Wall Street’s Banks with Cenk Uyger - msnbc tv:

Watch video...

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi exposes how the government is doing more to protect the banks than prosecute them...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Read: Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?
Financial crooks brought down the world's economy - but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them...

What We Lost Because Obama Didn’t Prosecute Banksters | Firedoglake

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Imagine that you don’t know much about high finance except what you occasionally read in the paper. You would know that we have the greatest finance business in the world, and that the smartest people make the most money. If you have a lot of money, it’s a sign of merit, so you know those Wall Street guys earned it. You know that the SEC is the cop on the beat and they are doing a great job: why, they locked up Martha Stewart to make the trading on Wall Street fair.


From the time you were a kid, you learned that the US stock market was the envy of other nations for its fairness and accessibility. You were taught that the US had come to dominate the finance business because it brought in great brains from physics and math, and the best business minds rapidly move up in the hierarchy by innovation and invention. You wanted to move your money into mutual funds, so you could share in the profits generated through wise investments, and you knew that you could manage your own retirement by careful investments. Those are the fundamental building blocks of your perception of the Way Things Work.


Even in the teeth of the Great Crash, your first thought would not be that the Wall Streeters were responsible. It was those irresponsible people who bought houses they couldn’t afford, or minorities using the government to buy houses they couldn’t afford, or whatever other nonsense you heard from your friends or the TV. It would be easy to distract you from looking at the real causes.


That is why the failure of the Obama administration to prosecute a single bankster is so depressing.Prosecutions would have proved that the Great Crash wasn’t the fault of people who bought houses they couldn’t afford, or the result of government efforts to counter discrimination against minorities trying to buy houses. Prosecutions would have placed the blame squarely on the financial elites, where it belongs. Financiers would not have been able to blame the usual suspects, and use their tools in the press and their politicians to divert attention from their responsibility for plunging the nation into economic disaster.


Prosecutions would have set the stage for real regulation of the finance business. When the banksters sent their lobbyists to Congress, people would have been repulsed, like they were when Lanny Davisshowed up to protect the brutal Ivory Coast usurper Gbagbo. Congress would have been forced to ignore them, no matter how much money went into their campaigns, and there would have been less money because the banksters would have been paying their lawyers millions for self-defense.


Prosecutions would have made it clear that the solution to the crisis wasn’t saving banksters but saving citizens from the crimes of the banksters. We could have set up foreclosure plans that would be oriented to salvaging American families instead of raising the profits of the thieves who created the problems. We could have used fiscal policy to support recovery instead of the weak tools of the Fed which have showered money on the banks at the expense of savers and retirees.


We could have shrunk the finance business back to its proper place in society. We could have pushed the Jamie Dimons and Tim Geithners out of positions of influence in government and replaced them with people whose goal is to improve things for everyone, not just the fabulously rich. Who knows, it might even have opened the eyes of those who deny global warming, and blindly support all our wars, from the killing in Iraq and Afghanistan and Yemen and Pakistan, to the wars on drugs and airplane travelers.


Try (I know it’s hard) to imagine a US Attorney prosecuting financiers for those deals set up to let financial elites short the housing market at the expense of some pension plan. Imagine a perp walk for accounting fraud in the use of Repo 105 or any of the other control frauds that were so common in the run-up to the Great Crash. Imagine any of a number of hedge fund operators in front of criminal juries explaining how they really make money. Imagine the difference in public understanding. It would have been a real life Pecora Commission.


The Obama administration threw away the chance to open the minds of average Americans to the dangers of blind trust in the myth of the market. Obama is a meliorist, only willing to take tiny steps with little chance of changing fundamentals. We need more, much more.

Elizabeth Warren Helped Shoot Down Bill That Would Have Sped Foreclosures, Calendar Shows by Shahien Nasiripour - The Huffington Post

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Elizabeth Warren was the first senior Obama administration official to recognize the potentially incendiary impact of a bill that would have made it significantly easier for mortgage companies to foreclose on homes, and her subsequent warnings played a crucial role in persuading the President to veto the measure, according to freshly released documents and people familiar with the deliberations.

The disclosure that Warren was instrumental in halting a bill that would have streamlined the foreclosure process comes as she confrontsfierce criticism from Republicans on Capitol Hill for the way she was appointed to construct a new consumer financial protection bureau, and characterizations that she is inclined to take an overly punitive tack with Wall Street.

A long-time advocate for greater regulation of the financial system and a prominent critic of predatory lending, Warren now finds herself at the center of an intensifying debate over the relationship between the Obama administration and the business world.

For consumer advocates, who have long decried what they portray as Wall Street's outsized influence in Washington, Warren represents their greatest hope that big banks will be more tightly supervised following the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. For a vocal group of business leaders and their Republican allies, Warren has become Exhibit A in their case that the Obama administration is anti-business.

The decisive way in which she labored behind the scenes to stymie a bill that would have eased requirements for documentation in the foreclosure process underscores how her arrival has altered the administration's relationship with major banks.

The bill, which passed both houses of Congress and awaited President Obama's signature to become law, essentially would have compelled notaries to accept out-of-state notarizations, regardless of the rules in those states.

State officials across the country--who have been pursuing probes looking into wrongdoing within the foreclosure process-- feared that those jurisdictions with lax standards could have become hotbeds for foreclosure documentation fraud. Lenders and mortgage companies could have used those states as central clearing houses to produce bogus foreclosure paperwork, and then export those documents to other states with more stringent regulations--an expedient bypass around the strictures.

Obama ultimately declined to sign the law, and the House of Representatives failed to override the veto.

Officials said Warren was among the first federal officials to recognize the significance of the notary bill, titled the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010. She met with authorities from several states and then relayed their concerns to influential administration officials.

During the morning of Oct. 6, Warren's team at the Treasury Department wrote the first memos on the bill, raising questions about the possible consequences if it became law, these people said.

That evening, Warren met for 30 minutes with Peter Rouse, Obama's interim chief of staff, her calendar shows. She later spent an hour on the phone with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who once sued Countrywide Financial and exacted an $8.4 billion multi-state settlement.

The next day, Warren participated in an afternoon meeting on the bill, her calendar shows. During that meeting one of Obama's top spokesmen, Dan Pfeiffer, posted an entry on the White House Blog explaining why Obama would not sign the bill.

On Oct. 8, Obama declined to sign the bill into law, citing the need for "further deliberations about the possible unintended impact" of the bill on "consumer protections, including those for mortgages."

Documents released Wednesday show that Warren met or spoke with at least eight state officials leading a 50-state investigation into possibly-fraudulent mortgage documentation practices.

The state attorneys general, secretaries of state and bank supervisors are probing the way in which major mortgage companies have pushed through thousands of foreclosure cases at a time, as if on a factory assembly line, by short-cutting the required documentation process.

Recent weeks have featured a host of unsavory disclosures about how mortgage companies employed so-called robo-signers-- people whose sole job was to sign foreclosure documents without reading them or confirming basic facts, as required by law. The volume of cases and shoddy handling of paperwork is reflective of the messy and indiscriminate lending practices that characterized the nation's housing boom, as Wall Street eagerly handed mortgages to seemingly anyone willing to sign off.

The states' investigation and a parallel multi-agency federal probe are now roiling the mortgage industry, heightening the possibility that major lenders could face potentially huge fresh losses as bad loans continue to emerge. With legal and regulatory uncertainty now enshrouding the industry and public outrage trained on foreclosures, the banks could have trouble limiting those losses by selling off the homes pledged against bad mortgages.

The nation's biggest lender, Bank of America, has seen its share price drop 18 percent through yesterday's market close since the day before the states announced their joint inquiry.

Warren serves as an assistant to Obama and a special adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as she leads the effort to create the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, a watchdog designed to protect borrowers from abusive lenders. Her calendar from Sept. 20 to Nov. 2 was released per a Freedom of Information Act request.

The longtime Harvard Law School professor and consumer advocate met or spoke with the state attorneys general from Iowa, Illinois, Texas, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Ohio, her calendar shows. She also met with Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, and spoke with New York's top banking regulator, Richard H. Neiman. They are among the leaders of the combined state probe.

Warren has long chided federal regulators for their lax oversight of the financial industry and slipshod protection of consumers. She's championed state regulators, however, who have often been ahead of their federal counterparts when it comes to consumer finance issues.

Warren's calendar also shows numerous meetings with bankers and their representatives. Financial executives and lobbyists have noted that Warren was reaching out to them more than they initially expected. The calendar confirms her outreach.

On Sept. 20, the same day she took a photo for her Treasury Department badge, Warren spent an hour and a half meeting with bankers from Oklahoma, her calendar shows. She spent an hour having lunch with Geithner that day as well.

Since then she's met with the chief executives of the nation's largest banks, including Vikram Pandit of Citigroup; Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase; John Stumpf of Wells Fargo; James Gorman of Morgan Stanley; Richard Davis of U.S. Bancorp; W. Edmund Clark of TD Bank Financial Group; David Nelms of Discover Financial Services; Niall Booker of HSBC North America Holdings; and Kenneth Chenault of American Express.

The calendar entry for Chenault's one-hour meeting on Oct. 13 notes that "He's flying here for us."

Warren also met with officials from Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest lender and one of the world's biggest financial institutions.

Notably absent from Warren's calendar are officials from Bank of America, the biggest bank in the U.S. by assets and branches, including its chief executive, Brian Moynihan.

Warren's calendar includes meetings with investors and trade groups, like the Consumer Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, the Financial Services Roundtable and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

Though Warren is known for her vigorous advocacy on behalf of consumers, she's spent more time with bankers and their lobbyists than with consumer groups and advocates during her roughly two months on the job.

Warren's 2007 journal article calling for the creation of a dedicated consumer agency inspired policymakers to enact it into law. Big banks opposed it.

Warren has also met with nearly two dozen members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, including the likely incoming chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Spencer Bachus, and the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, Richard Shelby. The Alabama Republicans have been particularly critical of Warren and her new agency.

Warren's calendar features numerous White House meetings, like a two-hour dinner on Sept. 23 with top Obama adviser David Axelrod and breakfasts and lunches with another top Obama counselor, Valerie Jarrett. She's also met with the heads of all the major federal financial regulatory agencies, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Among Warren's early initiatives are efforts to make credit card disclosure forms shorter and easier to read, and simplifying mortgage documents. Her first major speech since joining the administration was a Sept. 29 address to the Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington trade group representing firms like JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock and State Farm. She asked the assembled executives to work with her to create a new system of consumer regulation focused on core principles rather than a mountain of specific rules.

Opinion: Giving Small Banks a Chance to Thrive - Elizabeth Warren - POLITICO.com

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The bankers I have talked with are not looking to Washington to solve their problems. But they are looking for a market that allows them to compete. They are looking for a regulatory structure that doesn’t require an army of lawyers, and a level playing field that lets customers see the true cost of a product -- so lenders do not need to compete against a phantom price.

We are only at the beginning of our work and most of the consumer agency’s authorities have yet to phase in. But the direction of the agency is coming into focus. We want to level the playing field by streamlining regulations and eliminating outdated or ineffective rules. We want to make it easy for banks—large and small—to meet their obligations to their customers and to make the costs and risks of credit clear.ntinue Reading

My first week here, the agency’s implementation team launched a mortgage disclosure project with the ultimate goal of giving consumers better information while reducing the number of redundant federal forms. It is only a start -- but a good one.

We want to build outreach to small providers into this new agency’s DNA. Whether in Washington or outside the beltway, we are aiming to maintain a continuing conversation with community bankers and credit unions to make certain that they are included from the beginning in all initiatives.

This effort is critical not only because of the instructions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, but also because it is the right thing to do.

A generation of flat wages and rising basic expenses has hammered families. Too many middle class families have spent all their income and all their savings, and they have taken on debt to pay for college, to cover serious medical problems or just to stay afloat a little while longer.

Too often that debt is poorly understood, and terms buried in the fine print have cost customers dearly. The new consumer agency can serve families by making credit easier to understand and making markets more competitive.

But families can’t benefit over the long run if only a handful of banks are left standing. Families will be protected only if they can count on a robust, diversified banking industry. To serve American families, the new consumer agency needs to work with America’s community banks to make sure that there are a range of services and options available -- now and in the future.

Elizabeth Warren is an assistant to the president and a special advisor to the Treasury secretary for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Photo by Tony Rinaldo

Demand Your Mortgage Note..!!

Wheres the Note.org


The big banks' BS is starting to catch up to them.

Last week, JPMorgan Chase announced they were halting foreclosures in 23 states. Turns out, the bankers in charge of approving the foreclosure paperwork weren't even reading what they were signing. Now, one by one, foreclosures at America's biggest banks are grinding to a halt. It's gotten so bad, several states are taking the banks to court - calling for an immediate freeze on all foreclosures.

The banks created this mess, it's on them to clean it up. You have a right to know if your mortgage is affected.


Wall Street has bought and sold our mortgages so many times, they've lost track of who owns what. And now they're getting caught red handed. In one state, two banks tried to foreclose on the same home. In another state, BofA tried to take a house away from a man who'd never even had a mortgage. The more we learn, the worse it gets.

Banks are calling these "technical glitches." These are more than technical glitches. These are monumental screw-ups that are forcing families out of their homes. The banks raise our rates and change our terms - and if we make one mistake, we pay with our homes.

Don't have a mortgage? Pass this on to someone who does. Every single homeowner needs to know if their bank still holds their mortgage note.

Go to: Where's the Note.org


SEIU.org

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman (Movie Trailer) - Grassroots Education Movement (GEMNYC)...

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Parents and teachers on the front lines fighting for Real Education Reform.


A group of parents and educators with Grassroots Education Movement (GEMNYC) are responding to the "Waiting for Superman" film with a film of their own. They are the real reformers. As one patent activist says, "Are you waiting for Superman? YOU are the Real Heroes." This is the trailer. The film is expected to be released in late October.


For more info visit:


The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman


Grassroots Education Movement (GEMNYC)

Elizabeth Warren Rap Video- Got A New Sheriff

h/t: crooksandliars.com



Directed by: Rachel McDonald
Produced by: Bonnie Abaunza, Tiffany Bordenave, and Rachel McDonald
Director of Photography: Ross Riege
Editor: Jason Beattie
Starring: Ryan Anthony Lumas and Satnam S Ramgotra
Music Produced by:Lorne Balfe
Music Mixed by: Satoshi Noguchi
Recorded by: Chuck Choi
Music Programmer: Andrew Kawczynski
Backing Vocals: Michael Levine, Aleksey Igudesman, Lorne Balfe


Backing Track provided by Extreme Music, called Dirty Dollars off of album labeled XCD065.

Talking Business - Consumers Are Clamoring for Elizabeth Warren - NYTimes.com

Elizabeth Warren proposed the financial reform agency in an article in the summer of 2007.

So it turns out that the Elizabeth Warren rap video that went “viral” this week is actually a made-in-Hollywood production.

You know the video, don’t you? The one in which a struggling comedian named Ryan Anthony Lumas, dressed in a cowboy outfit, high-steps his way through two minutes of catchy, if ersatz, rap, with lyrics like Sheriff Warren’s what we need-o/ She’s not about the money and the green-o... /She wants to expose the banks and all the greed/ and get rid of unnecessary fees/Which means more money in my pocket?

The group behind the video is the Main Street Brigade. But when you call the Main Street Brigade, you get the Santa Monica office of Hans Zimmer, a prolific Hollywood composer. The two women listed as the Brigade’s contacts run Mr. Zimmer’s new philanthropic/activist arm.

They are also the ones who recruited Mr. Lumas to write and star in the video — he actually makes his living selling televisions at Best Buy — then spent an all-nighter editing it, and e-mailed it to the Elizabeth Warren-obsessed Huffington Post, where it had its premiere a week ago Friday.

“We’re Trojan-horsing people with the messaging,” said Bonnie Abaunza, one of the Brigadettes. In addition to Mr. Zimmer, supporters of the Main Street Brigade include the directors James Brooks and Ron Howard as well as other Hollywood celebrities. Its purpose is to back the work of Americans for Financial Reform, a large coalition of organizations pushing for financial reform. The coalition’s Web site lists the subjects it follows, including foreclosure, derivatives and mortgage reform.

And, of course, Elizabeth Warren.

The group desperately wants President Obama to name her to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a key part of the recently signed financial reform legislation. “Tell President Obama: Nominate Elizabeth to Head the C.F.P.B,” reads the coalition’shome page. When you click through, you get the text of a message that can be e-mailed directly to the White House, which points out, among other things, that the new bureau was her idea.

But why, I asked Ms. Abaunza, is it so important that Ms. Warren lead the new agency? Isn’t it enough that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau got passed — especially since the banks were so intent on killing it?

“She’s the people’s choice,” Ms. Abaunza replied. She said she was blown away when she watched a video of a speech by Ms. Warren that outlined all the ways a new consumer bureau could make things better for borrowers.

“The best way to explain it is that she speaks truth to power,” Ms. Abaunza continued. “She speaks about how people have been ripped off in a way that everybody understands. Although she is a Harvard professor, she doesn’t speak in an elitist way. She is a grandmother. She is from Oklahoma. I like the fact that she says ‘golly.’ She engenders this trust immediately. Because she is very honest.”

Also, she walks on water.

O.K., so she doesn’t walk on water. Which isn’t to say that Ms. Abaunza isn’t right. Indeed, the incredible groundswell around Ms. Warren’s candidacy appears to be putting President Obama in a tough spot.

His Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, by all accounts, would prefer to see Michael S. Barr, the assistant secretary for financial institutions, get the job. Others in the administration worry that she will impose tough new rules on the banks that will make it harder for them to nurse themselves back to health and hence the economy. But it is going to be awfully hard for him to turn his back on Ms. Warren.

With the president on vacation, nobody expects him to make this appointment until he returns at the end of August. But if he chooses anyone but her, he will be widely seen as helping the banks at the expense of the rest of us — something the government has been accused of doing far too often since those grim days of September 2008. With the midterm elections fast approaching, such accusations are not going to be terribly helpful to Democrats. Just a few days ago, 41 Democratic members of Congress sent Mr. Obama a letter pleading with him to appoint Ms. Warren.

How did this happen? How did a once-obscure Harvard Law professor become such a powerful touchstone?

Partly, it is because she really did come up with the idea. Ms. Warren’s views about banks and borrowers were largely formed early in her career when she and two colleagues, Teresa A. Sullivan, now the president of the University of Virginia, and Jay Lawrence Westbrook, a law professor at the University of Texas, conducted two seminal studies about people who file for bankruptcy.

In the late 1980s, when the first study was unveiled in a book the three of them wrote, “As We Forgive Our Debtors,” the root causes of bankruptcy weren’t well understood. The bank lobby routinely complained that Americans with the means to pay their debts were taking “the easy way out” by filing for bankruptcy. The empirical work done by the Warren-Sullivan-Westbrook team proved those claims false.

People who filed for bankruptcy were genuinely in over their heads, the researchers found. They had accumulated debt they couldn’t repay because they had lost their jobs or had some other life event that robbed them of their ability to earn a decent paycheck. They were often middle class, homeowners even. They filed for bankruptcy because they were desperate. Looking through thousands of bankruptcy filings, Mr. Westbrook said a few days ago, “you got a sense of human beings in real trouble.” He added, “All of us were very much affected by what we found in those files.”

By the summer of 2007, when Ms. Warren proposed the consumer agency, she was a well-known advocate for financial consumers — and the scourge of the credit card industry. She coined the term “tricks and traps” to describe how the banks lulled people into agreeing to credit card terms they weren’t even aware of when they signed up for the card. She had testified before Congress many times.

In the article where she proposed the new agency — she called it the financial product safety commission — she began with an analogy to toasters. (Ms. Warren has a thing for toaster analogies.) “It is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and burning down your house,” she wrote. “But it is possible to refinance an existing home with a mortgage that has the same one-in-five chance of putting the family out on the street.” Her timing could not have been better, she wrote the article at the exact moment the subprime bubble was reaching its peak.

What struck me, when I reread that article recently, was the bluntness of her language. She used words like “tricks,” “fleece,” and “bribe” to describe the actions of mortgage and credit card lenders. And I think a lot of her appeal stems from that simple fact: she describes abuses — predatory lending, hidden fees, bewildering “disclosures” that hide more than they disclose — in precisely the way most Americans have experienced them. She conveys a powerful sense that she understands what we’ve been through this last decade.

Her critics have complained that in her quest to avenge the downtrodden consumer, she could endanger the safety and soundness of banks, by writing rules that would strip them of billions in profits. Her essential position is that if taking advantage of borrowers is necessary to save the banks, then there is something deeply wrong with the banking system in America. The American Bankers Association may not agree with that, but that is unquestionably what most Americans believe. And they are right.

Ms. Warren also conveys a powerful sense of optimism about the good the new agency can do. I saw this for myself just a few days after President Obama signed the new law, when she was part of a panel discussion by the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal policy research organization that focuses on financial issues. I was also part of that panel, but after listening to Ms. Warren speak, I felt a little like Ms. Abaunza. I was bowled over.

That afternoon, Ms. Warren conveyed a great deal of passion, energy and historical knowledge about consumer lending practices. She gave a minitutorial about the history of usury laws, and about how credit card disclosures had become a tool for gouging customers.

Ms. Warren said that the new agency would have the power to make a rule, for instance, that credit card companies would have to disclose all their contract terms in two pages — in English simple enough for anyone with a 10th-grade education to understand. That one change, she said, would help end the practice of “cheating by contract.” (Another lovely Elizabeth Warren phrase, by the way.) When she had finished speaking, the audience gave her an ovation.

In 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt had to choose a chairman to head a new agency aimed at protecting financial consumers — in this case investors. The agency was the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the man Roosevelt picked was Joe Kennedy, the legendary investor (and father of the Kennedy clan). When Roosevelt was asked why he had turned to a “crook” to run the S.E.C., he famously replied, “Takes one to catch one.”

This time, the president is facing a different choice. The people who want Elizabeth Warren to run the new consumer agency are rooting for her precisely because she is not one of them. She’s one of us.

Goldman Sachs Pledges Not to Spend on Political Ads by Javier C. Hernandez- NYTimes.com

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Facing pressure from critics of Wall Street to limit its role in elections, Goldman Sachs has pledged not to spend any of its vast corporate reserves on political advertising.

The move was an unexpected sign of restraint after a major Supreme Court ruling this year that gave corporations the power to devote unlimited amounts to electing or defeating candidates for federal office.

The investment bank quietly revised its statement on political activities on its Web site last week, adding a sentence addressing the powers that were granted under the Supreme Court decision in January, known as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. “Goldman Sachs also does not spend corporate funds directly on electioneering communications,” the firm said in its statement.

Those communications are generally interpreted to mean advertisements on radio and television broadcasts in the run-up to an election.

The decision came after weeks of talks with the New York City public advocate, Bill de Blasio, who has lobbied for greater transparency from companies seeking to sway the outcome of elections.

The investment bank, not usually known as an ally of grass-roots causes, declined to comment on its position.

Mr. de Blasio hailed Goldman’s pledge as game-changing and, given the firm’s stature, he said, it could prompt other companies to follow suit.

“This could be one of those moments that determines whether we are going to have a political system literally dominated by corporate money, or some ability by the people at the grass roots to determine the outcome of elections,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Critics of the Citizens United decision, including President Obama, said it would allow corporations to drown out competing messages and corrupt the political system. But the Supreme Court said in its 5-to-4 decision that it was upholding a central tenet of the Constitution: the right to free speech by anyone, including corporations.

Federal law prohibits corporations from donating directly to candidates for federal office, but, the court decision said, they may pay for advertisements supporting or opposing them. Goldman employees may make personal contributions, but the firm requires that they first submit them for approval.
Campaign finance experts said companies like Goldman still had other means of exerting political influence.

Goldman, like many large companies, operates political action committees at the state and national levels that could raise money for the purpose of influencing political races. In addition, companies are free to spend money to advocate positions on specific issues, like health care, gun control or financial regulation.
“This doesn’t mean they are disarmed,” said Richard Briffault, a law professor at Columbia University who specializes in campaign finance.

Lawrence A. Mandelker, a New York lawyer who specializes in campaign finance law, said Goldman’s position might persuade other businesses to abstain from political spending.

“It’s a precedent that can be cited to other companies, suggesting that they too decide not to exercise the right to spend unlimited amounts,” he said.

Some corporations have already started taking advantage of the new powers afforded by the Supreme Court. Target, for instance, recently donated $150,000 to a group that is running ads in support of a Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota who opposes gay marriage. Employees and gay rights advocates have criticized the donation.

Indeed, entering the political sphere comes with certain costs, including the potential for backlash from investors, the public and politicians.
Mr. Briffault said that some companies might be put off by those dangers, and that others might not be willing to tolerate the intense back-room lobbying for their support.

“It’s not clear that corporations are going to be zooming to take advantage of this,” he said.

Goldman Sachs Pledges Not to Spend on Political Ads by Javier C. Hernandez- NYTimes.com

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Facing pressure from critics of Wall Street to limit its role in elections, Goldman Sachs has pledged not to spend any of its vast corporate reserves on political advertising.

The move was an unexpected sign of restraint after a major Supreme Court ruling this year that gave corporations the power to devote unlimited amounts to electing or defeating candidates for federal office.

The investment bank quietly revised its statement on political activities on its Web site last week, adding a sentence addressing the powers that were granted under the Supreme Court decision in January, known as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. “Goldman Sachs also does not spend corporate funds directly on electioneering communications,” the firm said in its statement. 

Those communications are generally interpreted to mean advertisements on radio and television broadcasts in the run-up to an election.

The decision came after weeks of talks with the New York City public advocate, Bill de Blasio, who has lobbied for greater transparency from companies seeking to sway the outcome of elections.

The investment bank, not usually known as an ally of grass-roots causes, declined to comment on its position.

Mr. de Blasio hailed Goldman’s pledge as game-changing and, given the firm’s stature, he said, it could prompt other companies to follow suit.

“This could be one of those moments that determines whether we are going to have a political system literally dominated by corporate money, or some ability by the people at the grass roots to determine the outcome of elections,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Critics of the Citizens United decision, including President Obama, said it would allow corporations to drown out competing messages and corrupt the political system. But the Supreme Court said in its 5-to-4 decision that it was upholding a central tenet of the Constitution: the right to free speech by anyone, including corporations.

Federal law prohibits corporations from donating directly to candidates for federal office, but, the court decision said, they may pay for advertisements supporting or opposing them. Goldman employees may make personal contributions, but the firm requires that they first submit them for approval.

Campaign finance experts said companies like Goldman still had other means of exerting political influence.

Goldman, like many large companies, operates political action committees at the state and national levels that could raise money for the purpose of influencing political races. In addition, companies are free to spend money to advocate positions on specific issues, like health care, gun control or financial regulation.

“This doesn’t mean they are disarmed,” said Richard Briffault, a law professor at Columbia University who specializes in campaign finance.

Lawrence A. Mandelker, a New York lawyer who specializes in campaign finance law, said Goldman’s position might persuade other businesses to abstain from political spending.

“It’s a precedent that can be cited to other companies, suggesting that they too decide not to exercise the right to spend unlimited amounts,” he said.

Some corporations have already started taking advantage of the new powers afforded by the Supreme Court. Target, for instance, recently donated $150,000 to a group that is running ads in support of a Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota who opposes gay marriage. Employees and gay rights advocates have criticized the donation.

Indeed, entering the political sphere comes with certain costs, including the potential for backlash from investors, the public and politicians.

Mr. Briffault said that some companies might be put off by those dangers, and that others might not be willing to tolerate the intense back-room lobbying for their support.

“It’s not clear that corporations are going to be zooming to take advantage of this,” he said.