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Friday, March 8, 2013

Politics / Money Elizabeth Warren, Winning My Heart Again (and Again and Again)

Posted by Anna Minard on Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 2:02 PM

Senator Elizabeth Warren was running her smart mouth yesterday! I mean that in the best way. She is wonderful. Here she is reprimanding regulators who wrist-slap banks with fines instead of criminally prosecuting them:

“If you’re caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good you go to jail. If you’re caught repeatedly, you can go to jail for life,” Warren told regulators during a Senate Banking Committee hearing. “Incidentally, if you launder nearly a billion dollars in drug money, your company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night.”

That's from this Politico story, which you should read because it's full of quotes like that from her and other senators, and it also covers Attorney General Eric Holder's admission on Wednesday that the size of financial institutions makes it "difficult for us to prosecute them" if doing so would "have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy."

Aaaaaand #toobigtojail starts trending...

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Comments (12) RSS

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They don't seem to think this matters much. And though she gives voice to people's frustration with two tiered justice, nothing will change.

Posted by Pope Peabrain on March 8, 2013 at 2:18 PM

It's inconceivable HSBC would get away with what it did. The worst part is they did over 10-11 years and after 30+ warnings from the OCC.

Posted by biffp on March 8, 2013 at 2:55 PM

Ultimately the regulators believe that the buck of prosecution stops at the DOJ's office. Holder is Obama's mouthpiece. She needs to communicate the same sentiments to Mr. Hope and Change if she hasn't done so already.

Posted by neo-realist on March 8, 2013 at 3:04 PM

It's like she has watched The Wire.

Posted by PTrig on March 8, 2013 at 3:19 PM

@3--She has. We await a response.

Posted by Ballard Pimp on March 8, 2013 at 3:23 PM

@2, I do not think that word means what you think it means. ;)

Seriously though, if all Democrats had messaging as good and strongly populist as she does, they'd never lose another election. I hope she's President Warren some day, the bankers won't have a chance.

Posted by SamClemens on March 8, 2013 at 4:03 PM

@6, Princess Bride - very nice.

Posted by biffp on March 8, 2013 at 4:08 PM

If Elizabeth Warren runs for president in 2016, she's gonna mop the deck.

Particularly if Rand Paul splits the ticket and siphons votes from the Bush/Rubio campaign.

Posted by CPN on March 8, 2013 at 5:26 PM

To clarify, for those not familiar with the term:

'If Elizabeth Warren runs in 2016, she's gonna mop the deck with the Republicans asses.'

Posted by CPN on March 8, 2013 at 6:38 PM

@9 - I hope so, too. She'd sure be harder to swift-boat than Hillary. I'm sure the whole theme of the Bush/Rubio campaign against Clinton would be Benghazi, the non-scandal that will never die. Probably Hillarycare for good measure.

But what do they have on Warren? I'd love to see them try to make a scandal out of her claims to be part Cherokee, or refer to her by the title "Professor" like the word is a slur, like that idiot Scott Brown did.

I'm sure Wall Street pundits would be predicting doom if she's elected, just like they did every time Obama got his way. Paul Krugman has a good editorial on that today.

Posted by Free Lunch on March 8, 2013 at 7:05 PM

Mynard- Maybe you should move to Taxachussets so you can be one of her constituents...

Posted by GeneStoner on March 9, 2013 at 1:15 PM

People need to stop thinking that the right President can just single handedly make everything better. Warren should work for her cause, not for a particular political office.

Posted by bleepinbleep on March 11, 2013 at 5:28 AM