Consumer Protection, Misc - La Cueva

From Thom Hartmann,

Who Will Protect Consumers?

According to a source close to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, he is openly against the potential nomination of Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The financial reform bill passed by the Senate on Thursday mandates the creation of this new consumer agency charged with protecting consumers from predatory lenders. Geithner doesn't want the most outspoken advocate for creating the agency to lead it. That makes perfect sense. Let's only let people run organizations who hate those organizations, right? Like Bill Bennett - an outspoken advocate of shutting down and destroying the Department of Education, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan to head that agency. Or putting an Arabian Horse Judge to be head of FEMA. That's how government should run, according to Republicans and Geithner. Never, ever let somebody work in a government agency who actually has a passion for the agency or is competent to run it! Case in point? Tim Geithner, who as president of the New York Fed oversaw a decade of insane banking practices that crashed the entire planet's economy, is now Secretary of the Treasury. It doesn't get any crazier than that.

Hartmann nails it! But he could also have included Christopher Cox, head of the SEC during Bush I's second term. Not only did he not see any of this severe recession coming, never mind do anything, when he, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke were testifying before Congress he never said a word. The examples of putting someone who dislikes (hates?) the agency they're running or knows little about it are legion; Michael Brown at FEMA, John Bolton as US Ambassador to the United Nations, and, of course, Cox. What if Obama had chosen to capitalize on his early popularity and nominated Ralph Nader or one of his disciples to be Attorney General? No doubt this would have caused Corporate America and their puppets (Republicans) to spasm uncontrollably. But what would their argument have been? It is no secret that no other person in the US--bar none--who has done more for consumer protection in US history than he has. Sad thing is, a decade after the 2000 elections there are still hurt feelings among Democratic powers that be. Too bad for the rest of us...