In the late nineteen-nineties, Congress was trying to pass a bankruptcy bill that Warren felt was written, essentially, by the credit-card industry. For several years, through a growing network of allies in Washington, she helped liberals in Congress fight the bill, but at the end of the Clinton Administration the bill seemed on the verge of passage. Clinton’s economic team was divided, much as Democrats today are split over economic policy. His progressive aides opposed the bill; aides who were more sympathetic to the financial industry supported it. Warren targeted the one person in the White House who she believed could stop the legislation: the First Lady. They met alone for half an hour, and, according to Warren, Hillary stood up and declared, “Well, I’m convinced. It is our job to stop that awful bill. You help me and I’ll help you.” In the Administration’s closing weeks, Hillary persuaded Bill Clinton not to sign the legislation, effectively vetoing it.
But just a few months later, in 2001, Hillary was a senator from New York, the home of the financial industry, and she voted in favor of a version of the same bill. It passed, and George W. Bush signed it into law, ending Warren’s ten-year war with a crushing defeat. ...RyanLizza,NewYorker
Elizabeth Warren isn't, of course, in the running. Clinton, Lizza reports, has turned Warren into an adviser.
Hillary Rodham, back in those Wellesley days, appears to have been a strong liberal. Or maybe just a feminist. Or something. Now she appears to be on the defensive. That split in the Democratic party over the power of the financial sector isn't really necessary. No one wants to kill off all the services of banks and brokerages, just the corruption inherent in the finance industry. We need a strong candidate who can articulate the needs of consumers and of the system itself.
Using Warren's words to sweeten Clinton's candidacy doesn't do the job. And Clinton is in no way as straightforward as Warren who said, at one point, to Ryan Lizza: "Some of the biggest financial institutions in this country developed a business model around cheating American families, and they put out the riskiest possible products. They sold mortgages that were like grenades with the pins pulled out, and then they packaged up those risks and sold them to pension plans and municipal governments, groups that did not intend to buy high-risk financial products. That’s how Wall Street blew up the American economy. That’s a genuine threat, and that’s worth paying attention to."
Damn right!
