Massachusetts consumer advocate and Harvard bankruptcy law professor Elizabeth Warren was grilled by Representative McHenry, the North Carolina chair of a House subcommittee the other day. The testimony was supposed to be about the direction of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in a report to Congress. The Congressman, however, seemed less concerned with what Professor Warren had accomplished at the CFPB, and more focused on character assassination, actually calling her a liar regarding the simple matter of scheduling the hearing. A video of the exchange can be viewed. The CFPB, the brainchild of Ms. Warren after years of careful study and implemented by Congress following the financial crisis, has been under attack by various factions with allegiance to large financial institutions. Ms. Warren is now in a political tug of war: Some want her to return to Massachusetts and run for Senate; others want her out of power altogether in Washington. Regardless of where she goes after her temporary appointment, we see her devotion to protecting consumers where they interact with the financial world: credit card rights, 401k disclosures and consumer banking disclosures. The partisan attacks in Washington remind us of President Obama’s speech at the University of Michigan, last May, when he related a story of a letter written by a kindergartner asking, “Are people being nice?”
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