Who elected Elizabeth Warren president of the US economy?
All signs point to Joe Biden, who between naps and licks of his ice cream cone has bestowed upon Warren de facto presidential powers to appoint people to key government posts that influence the nation’s economy.
I know this because bankers hire lobbyists to sniff out who is getting what jobs so they can plan their business accordingly. These lobbyists are telling the C-suite leaders that the man who was elected president is largely checked out on many issues including these appointments. (Surprise!)
Even worse, Biden has farmed out decisions like these to a coterie of progressive advisers (domestic-policy adviser Susan Rice apparently has a big say on stuff), who in turn take too many of their marching orders from Warren on who regulates the US economy.
That makes the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, in the words of one top Wall Street executive monitoring White House economic appointments, “president for financial regulation.”
What makes Warren so qualified for such power over the $22 trillion US economy is truly baffling. Of course she’s smart; her ascent began in academia and Harvard Law School. But we’re not talking Milton Friedman or even Larry Summers here. Warren’s academic research focused on bankruptcy and consumer issues, not how best to prime an economy to lift wages and produce jobs.
Yet the consumer stuff and her Harvard pedigree made Warren a go-to TV talking head to bank-bash during the 2008 financial crisis. Before long, she had the ear of President Barack Obama as he was weighing the post-crisis future of banking.
Her brainchild was a new, largely duplicative layer of government called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Warren had grand ambitions for the agency as a prosecutor of malice and greed in banking. Its record was far less impressive. The CFPB was credibly accused of conjuring fake scandals; running interference for trial lawyers looking to squeeze a quick buck out of targeted industries; and coming to the rescue of consumers only after scandals had been uncovered by the media (see the Wells Fargo fake-account mess).