Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has put the bank regulators on notice: Their lives are about to change. Today, she pressed them on their lack of concern with prosecuting Wall Street institutions guilty of crony capitalism:
"The question I really want to ask is about how tough you are. About how much leverage you really have in these settlements and, what I'd like to know is, tell me about the last few times you've taken the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street all the way to trial. Anybody?"When the bank regulators stumbled all over themselves, unable to answer the question, Warren was frank:
"There are district attorneys and United States attorneys out there every day squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial in order to make an example, as they put it. I'm really concerned that 'too big to fail' has become 'too big for trial."The Huffington Post pointed out the irony of the situation:
The financial regulators can blame, at least in part, Wall Street lobbyists (along with outgoing Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Senate Republicans) for their embarrassing turn at the hearing. Warren would have been on the panel herself representing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, instead of a sitting senator, if her nomination to head the agency hadn't been thwarted in 2011.So glad to have you in the Senate, Senator Warren.
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