PrintJuly 29, 2010
Thousands of New Bureaucrats to 'Protect' Consumer Finances
The Boston Globe featured two op-eds on local favorite Elizabeth Warren, who has been nominated to head the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Agency. On what passes for debate on the left, Joshua Green made "The Case for Elizabeth Warren," while Warren's fellow Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried argued that "Obama should give Warren a recess appointment." Apparently none of the voices opposing the Warren nomination could be reached for comment.
None of this is surprising. I was however struck by a line in the Green article:
[I]t's misleading to imply, as a Washington Post account did, that Warren personally will "hire hundreds, maybe even thousands of people, create an administrative structure from scratch, and oversee what is likely to be a long and arduous process of writing regulations.'' Mostly, her staff will do that work.
The debate here is over whether Warren has sufficient managerial skills to hire thousands of new federal employees who will spend years writing new regulations. It seems to Green and the author of the WaPo article that yet another massive expansion of federal bureaucracy is unremarkable and expected of government. I meanwhile am gnashing my teeth and tearing my hair at the thought of President Obama's destructive assault on our financial well-being-in the name of "Financial Protection."
