Elizabeth Warren

It is postulated that Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor, should become head of any new consumer protection agency mandated by Congress, but she is not fit for broad public powers. She already has these powers in some sort of powerful oversight role for Congress of the TARF and TALP plans. She simply has an agenda that is vindictive and is not based on facts. She is a visibly self-righteous attention seeker, and we do not need more of these in the public arena.

Why this today. She attacked Citicorp today for their plan to increase some salaries by 50% by saying in a big public way "they don't get it". Like Sheila Barr of the FDIC she thinks personal attacks are the best approach to governance.

Here's the deal. Even in big multi-product banks the normal protocol for even middle management employees had become that a base salary was supplemented by a bonus and by stock awards. Experience here, not a trader or merger guy, was that salary increases stopped in 1997 and all increases in compensation depended on bonus and deferred stock awards. In 2009 that no longer works. Bonuses are eliminated or contained and regulated and the stock awards of the past worthless. Just to retain valuable employees and give them the basic money to pay their bills in high cost environments justifies Citi's action. From this perspective the bills could not have been paid on basic salary at this point.

Elizabeth Warren, smart as she is and with all the academic accolades, knows this. One could only guess that she is just looking for attention and looking for the opportunity to ridicule when she says that Citi "just doesn't get it". There is no place for her in a constructive role in our government.