Charlie Rose

DDEENY  11/14/2009 08:41 PM Report

Thank you, Ms. Warren. It's certainly refreshing to hear a constructive, hopeful voice of reason. Our Founding Fathers would be turning in their graves if they knew what we heirs of liberty have turned our nation into. An elite class of wealth, privilege and entitlement has risen to destroy the concept of God-given liberty with the idea that even our common rights as citizens (that was purchased with the blood of patriots) that We the People share, can be bought with any sum of money and that they can hold us hostage for as long as they see fit to serve their own worldly interests, as they continue headlong on a shameless, desperate, unrepentant orgy of fiscal irresponsibility. The immorality of this is unspeakable. And where it ends, only God knows. Those in high places have seen fit to confound their own ideology of free enterprise as a manifestation of individual liberty by practicing a game of deception and delusion, the price for which is borne by their subjects, the innocent victims who now will pay for this sin AFTER they have lost their livelihoods and/or homes, which serves as the most damning testimony against them, as the godly serve to rescue the ungodly and their unjust system. The public outcry of righteous indignation is also far too weak to be heard by those in authority, who We the People have elected to serve us and our common good. The question that I now ask is, "Could the terrorists have been right all along about us, that our ungodly ways of social and economic injustice merit divine judgment? Have we in fact made their case for them?" God help us all.

krduncan  05/19/2009 09:39 AM Report

This conversation glosses over the main issue of our banking system. Banks are private - they are not owned by "us", yet, they serve "us". However, the Federal Reserve System is a systematic subsidy to the banks. Purchasing power is systematically shifted from income earners and savers to provide a "lender of last resort" facility to the banking industry. This semi-public construct has resulted in the Federal government being the "lender of last resort" as the Fed's activities extended beyond the tradition "liquidity" provision role as it was originally founded to do. Nationalization will not result in a meaner and leaner banking system - quite the opposite. Rather than greed and short term profit driving the incentive to assume too much risk, it will be political power and a bureaucracy that drives the incentive to assume too much risk. The primary factors behind the banking system issues are 1) limitless Fed subsidies (well, at least as long as the Federal Government can issue bonds) through reserve injections aimed at encouraging consumption growth through credit expasnion and 2) government guarantees of deposits through the FDIC which ensures that "agency risk" is borne by the taxpayer and banking risk is cyclically pushed to the limit. If American citizens really wish to cease subsidizing banking institutions, they will have to live with a market-based approach to banking reserve determination (ie. gold standard or some such mechanism), the removal of bank deposit guarantees (which will require doing homework on the creditworthiness of banks before placing funds on deposit) and much lower credit growth (credit will have a natural limitation relative to incomes). This is not likely as long as American citizens do not understand the banking system and the systematic nature of the subsidy (loss of purchasing power) and as long as the consumption impulse ("I want it now") is viewed as an entitlement. There is no free lunch. The system is highly redistributive and is a major cause of what politicians like to call "income disparity". In essence, it is the quid pro quo for social entitlements. The poor and middle class get redistribution in the form of Social Security, Medicare, etc and the rich get it back in the form of a monetary regime biased toward asset price inflation. It is all a big waste which ultimately benefits the few and burdens the majority. If you really want a free society with a balanced income distribution, get rid of the Fed (or strictly constrain it) and get rid of entitlement programs. If you want redistribution, make it explicit, targeted and transparent (if you think the banking crisis is expensive, wait until the entitlement deficits hit in the next decade!). Otherwise, settle for inflation and declining real median incomes for as far as the eye can see.

tartufe  05/13/2009 05:02 PM Report

Ms Warren has a major fault, her alumnification. Coined just for her. Harvard if I'm not mistaken has produced many of the financial wise-guys, a la Larry Summers, Bobby Rubin, Henry Paulson, yadda yadda. If I've included offensive nonalums, apologizes all round. Point made as Harvard has no aura of envy. Doctorates of Egregious Greed, sans equity and fairness are anathema for some of us out here.

aurora88  05/13/2009 12:54 PM Report

Elizabeth Warren is a true American heroine and patriot. I wish there were more out their like her with her passion to advocate for the rest of us. Thank you for this interview.

ajca  05/12/2009 04:53 PM Report

Thank you Elizabeth Warren for your advocacy on behalf of most Americans... sans oligarchs.

However, something is missing: we need a leader to mobilize us, that we might actively fight for a fair financial system... and no doubt it is a fight. Congress, as Sen. Durbin said, has been bought by the oligarchs, and serve them before the American people. The facts of this are in their votes. Dems or Repubs. So what can we do? Who do we follow? What structure/institution is in place, right now, to allow for grass-roots participation? If we can elect Barack Obama, we can clean up this mess too, by actions at the street level. Where do we go for that leadership? Obama cannot make change alone; he needs to be constantly pressured too. And you Professor Warren: again, thanks. But do you have a place for us? What can we do? Where? How?

REMant  05/12/2009 12:47 PM Report

I wish I could be as sanguine as she, but I think elected and non-elected officials alike will never pay attention to the public until citizens start carting them off to the guillotine. Worse, tho, I'm afraid they will never meet that fate. I have been convinced for most of my life that Americans cannot govern themselves. They always blame on someone else for their mistakes, or label them misfortune. For the umpteenth time I'll say that the problem we have is not an unregulated market, but the free market in a monetary system that essentially allows limitless credit, and hence has no market discipline. Prof Warren, if she means not to address that, will NEVER solve any other problem. Thinking about yesterday's offer by the healthcare industry to rein in costs, it occurred to me that given the propensity of the Keynesians in the admin to spend, it may ironically be business (aside from the financiers) to whom the president must turn to get reform done, because as Greider adverted to later in this hour most of them are old-fashioned enough to understand what is wrong. Regarding TARP, perhaps we have been looking at all of this exactly backwards, and should be buying and reselling distressed properties, instead of buying shares in banks or putting them or homeowners into bankruptcy.

Ricardo_Amaral  05/12/2009 12:14 PM Report

I enjoyed Charlie Rose’s interview with Elizabeth Warren. She is a very attractive lady and soft-spoken.

I posted the following information on the Elite Trader Economics Forum:

October 18, 2005 - The New US Bankruptcy Law

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=57300

My screen name on that forum is SouthAmerica.

I know Mrs. Warren is an expert on bankruptcy law, and I wonder what kind of impact the changes in the bankruptcy law of October 2005 is having in the current economy of the United States.

Basically about 5 million people that filled for bankruptcy under chapter-7 since the new bankruptcy law went into effect did not get a fresh start as before – at the end of the day that resulted into 5 million people who were taken out of the consumer market in the US and these people can’t afford to buy anything since they have to pay a big chunk of their old debts.

That means that every year the US loses another 1.6 million potential consumers in the US economy and the cumulative effect over the years must be devastating to the US economy.

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