It seems everybody is afraid of Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor charged by President Obama with setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
snip
"If there had been a cop on the beat with the authority to hold mortgage services accountable a half-dozen years ago," she announced, "the problems in mortgage servicing would have been exposed . . . long before they became a national scandal."
ad_icon
Warren added: "We need a cop on the beat that American families can count on. It is critical that we get this right - a real cop on the beat."
"You kept saying 'cop on the beat, cop on the beat,' " complained Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who chaired the day's hearing.
Warren could not dispute this. In reply, she said that banks must know "there will be a cop on the beat" and that her agency will need "enough money to put enough cops on the beat." Before completing her testimony, Officer Warren made four more references to cops-on-beats - possibly putting her in violation of public-nuisance statutes.
But it was a useful metaphor: If she's the cop, then banks are the robbers, and members of the Republican majority on the committee sounded like lawyers for the accused.
Clearly Capito wants to let the banks keep screwing over people or she'd be supporting Warren's nomination.
