As we indicated, this is the second post in a series on Banker Derangement Syndrome, in which people who might once have been sensible are acting as mindless mouthpieces of particularly rancid banking industry propaganda. We suspect it has to do with being too long in close proximity of zombie banks; they probably need to suck grey matter out of the living to keep functioning. William Cohan wrote a particularly wretched piece for Bloomberg on why Elizabeth Warren should do everyone a favor and put herself on the next train out of DC. There is a decent case to be made against having Warren head the CFPB, but that’s not what Cohan provided. He instead made a weak argument (if you can even call it that) and got screechy to cover for it. Felix Salmon already kneecapped it on substantive grounds. Cohan perversely says that Warren would not be approved and then ‘fesses up that those nasty Republicans won’t permit anyone to head the CFPB. 44 Republican Senators wrote a letter saying they won’t approve of any nominee from either party unless the CFPB is gutted reformed.
So as much as Cohan huffed and puffed about Warren, this isn’t about Warren at all, it’s about the CFPB and the elephant in the room, how this country is to be run. The Republicans have turned the page back to the Richard Nixon playbook, in which he has Kissinger promoted the view that the president was unstable and therefore needed to be treated with kid gloves. Now of course, the kabuki goes several layers deeper here. Obama has been quite willing to fight for what he wants (he whipped aggressively for the TARP and lobbied personally to assure a rocky-looking Bernanke reappointment went through) but it suits him to uses those wacky Republicans as protective cover for doing what he wants to do anyhow, which is move further to the right so as to ease his 2012 fundraising. And among still-in-denial Democratics, the weird belief is that Obama lacks the will to be tough tactically and do roll calls to break a Republican pro-forma Senate session which is intended to block a recess appointment of Warren, when he never had any intention of giving her the job.
Folks, the only way Warren could have gotten the nod from Team Obama is if she acceded to the banking industry view of what the CFPB should do, which is a smidge of cosmetic change to placate unhappy consumers and nothing more.
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