Elizabeth Warren paints a disturbing picture of the realities facing the United States and the Obama administration as Americans claw their way clear of the worst recession since the 1930s.
Lobbyists for the financial industry have put the kibosh on market reforms that would aid the recovery. Banks, saved from Tartarus by taxpayer money, are using a free government guarantee against failure to rebuild profits and credit ratings, while either not lending to business or trying to milk American consumers of every dime they’ve still got.
“That’s our plan to rebuild the American economy. Think about it,” says the bespectacled Harvard professor who chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel set up to investigate the $700 billion banking bailout.
“What the government is doing right now is, it’s permitting a set of rules that says, in effect: ‘Hey, banks. We will lend to you at zero and you go out there and figure out what you can squeeze out of every American family. No new rules’,” she told MSNBC.
Why have the rules not changed? “There are very powerful interests that believe that they can profit from keeping status quo.”
