Letter from Elizabeth Warren to Ben Bernanke, Eric Holder, and Mary Jo White

>As to Warren's letter, she has spent her entire career in academics and has never worked as a lawyer. She does not know the amount of resources required to participate in a lawsuit and trial.

The fact that she has spent her entire career in academics does not mean she is unaware of the costs and benefits of going to trial. But, even if your invalid premise was correct, that's the entire point of the letter. She is asking for an analysis of the costs and benefits of going to trial.

> As lawyers, we are constantly encouraged to settle cases to resolve issues rather than spend the time and expense going to trial. We should not be encouraging the government to sue people and take them to trial when they are willing to settle.

This blanket statement is ridiculous. We're talking about stakes that are higher than you (or anyone) can count. If banks do not have the proper incentives they could easily wreak havoc on the world economy. A few billion dollar settlement does not provide the proper incentives for organizations worth 100s of billions of dollars.

>To take a case to a show trial in order to make an public example of the defendant is bad policy more fitting of a dictatorship.

Warren is a member of the legislative branch not the executive branch, which balances the power of the executive branch. Moreover, she is not trying to subvert any sort of due process. She is merely asking questions. This is contrary to the very nature of a dictatorship.

a good way to look at a situation like this is go read the letter without having the author in mind. If the SUBJECT MATTER OF THE LETTER she wrote seems wrong and accusatory, you should disqualify it. Otherwise, you're just mudslinging. P.S. I'm not claiming to be for or against EW. I'm not even from USA, but it seems neglecting subject matter of an issue to dig up personal history as the FIRST REACTION is a way of doing politics, it is not a way of being objective and analytical.

Right. So taking HSBC to trial for rampant, repeated money-laundering for drug cartels would have been more fitting of a dictatorship? Instead we let a criminal conspiracy go unpenalized except for a lame monetary settlement.

Warren's dead right. The finance guys all know they'll almost never get prosecuted.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/dec/11/hsbc-bank-us-...

> Warren lied about being Native American to benefit from affirmative action.

Source please.

I read this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/09/27/th...

But there is a lot more nuance to the story than your simple one liner. For example, it doesn't look like anyone at Harvard knew about her claimed NA heritage before giving her tenure. If you have heard different then please share.

"Warren lied about being Native American to benefit from affirmative action."

Doesn't seem to be true: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/everyt...

A law not universally and consistently enforced is not a law.

As for the financial penalties, the directly culpable individuals do not pay them. Nor, in the long run for such "too big to fail" institutions, do the shareholders.

The customers pay them. Especially when you have companies in an oligarchical, if not monopolistic, position. Penalties become a cost of business that gets passed on.

In several of these penalties of very large institutions, people have "crunched the numbers" and found that, at most, the penalty represents a quarter or two's profit.

Measure that against the years of outsized profit gained during and often in good part due to the abuse being penalized, and "cost of doing business" is all the further put in context.

As an individual, when you go to jail, it doesn't as much matter what your assets are. While you're in jail, you don't get to enjoy them. (This is not entirely true, and we also have now the example of Skilling (Enron) essentially spending his way out of prison. But, he still suffered some direct, personal hardship.)

As a corporation, such costs are spread over a large institution and number of people, and individuals may face little or no hardship. Even those senior executives who "resign", "take the fall", or are booted out often continue to receive millions in compensation, on top of what they've already squirreled away.

(Lower level members can and are screwed over -- "sacrifices" to the good of the institution that has chosen to excise them.)

I think respect for such senior executives among the larger population these days is really largely a matter of envy. An envy often driven in turn by one's fear for one's own increasingly precarious financial and physical circumstances. Respect for such people as "leaders" continues to decline.

Look at the bottom basement approval ratings for members of Congress. People have figured out that those people do not play by the same rules -- do not exist in the same legal and financial world, as the normal population does.

We in the U.S. expostulate that we are a "nation founded on laws". When the application of those laws becomes selective and overtly subject to finance -- justice, or its absence, "for sale" -- you weaken that very foundation.

(As a complementary point, arguments can be made that efforts to define and apply the law more universally have strengthened the country. For example, the suffrage and civil rights movements.)

P.S. I'll add that Warren, and Sheila Baer, and a few others are actually responsible for forcing through some of the few real and at least somewhat effective consumer (i.e. "normal person") protections in the mess of activity that constitute's the U.S.'s "financial bailout" efforts.

Finally, as to the politics, that whole "Native American" thing is a red herring -- emblematic of much bigger liars (as compared to their claims rather than facts) who make strident declamations to divert attention from their own atrocious behavior.

Credibility shot for doing whatever it takes to get ahead? In America? If she lied, which is debatable, I would have more respect for her. This isn't a meritocracy.

On your second point, going for the most efficient outcome isn't necessarily the best one for the american people.

It was my understanding that she was told as a child she was part Native American. Reguardless, it sounds like you live in a black and white world. People are good or bad. I'm here to tell you that is simply not so. You're dismissing this letter and her ideas because of past, unrelated indiscretions. You're making a pretty big accusation saying that she isn't looking out for her constituents, whom may I remind you voted her into office with the knowledge regarding her family heritage. Oh, look at that. You've derailed the conversation. How convenient.

Remember children, ad hominem attacks are what opponents use when their other arguments lack substance.

Ah, that makes more sense, thanks. It's a shame Scribd doesn't have a 'fit width' option that I could find - small viewport drove me straight into a real PDF viewer.

EDIT: Oh, one of those unlabelled, tooltipless buttons is actually 'fit width'. Heh.