I’ve found the last couple of days’ Yahoo video interviews of Elizabeth Warren, both informative and infuriating.
Here’s a no-nonsense Harvard Law School Professor who is willing to truth tell; willing to answer tough questions with candor, and unpopular answers. Hers is the voice of common sense, the outlier in this conspiracy of silence of Too-Big-To-Fail financial institutions having their way with “the rest of us”.
I’m astonished that she and the TARP Monitor Congressional Oversight Panel aren’t given any real power. No authority to pass laws, no authority to police activity, just as she says, appealing for business to “do the right thing”…not a theme that big business has adhered to lately, for certain. To her credit, she was able to virtually shame Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley into paying closer to 94 cents on the dollar vs. 66 cents on the first 1% of warrant sales!
Would that she could have been in charge at the outset of the Troubled Asset Relief Program–TARP last fall! Perhaps the big banks would have needed to supply answers to the very questions they ask us “mortal” borrowers, when we go hat-in-hand for a loan. No, instead they were handed/forced money, hand over Paulson’s fist, with no accounting mechanism whatsoever!
Well, now we must contact our congresspeople and representatives to fight the huge bank lobbys and urge the passage of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency with sharp teeth! Enough of big banks gouging the taxpayers for bail out monies only to turn around and raise credit card fees and interest rates on these same consumers, all the while doling out massive, groups-of-zero bonuses to themselves!
We can’t stop applying pressure now! Turn your outrage into action, and write and call today! We Can Do It Women! Remember what our foremother Margaret Mead said, “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Good day!
MsMorrison