Dear President Obama,
Today is Elizabeth Warren’s last day at the Treasury Department where she performed, in your opinion, very commendably in laying the groundwork and recruiting the excellent staff for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau inside the Federal Reserve.
At the same time that you cast her aside from the position to head the Bureau–clearly the most impressive candidate for that responsibility on many criteria–your emissaries were busy at posh Manhattan restaurants raising money from the Wall Streeters. Very successfully so. Reports are that of the first $100 million of your $1 billion campaign warchest, over one-third has come from the financial industry.
Wall Street bankers and brokers were opposed to the nomination of Elizabeth Warren. Everyone knows why. She has their number and she would have been a knowledgeable tough federal cop on the financial corporate crime, fraud and deception beat. Millions of fleeced Americans, many of whom lost their pensions, their savings, their investments, needed and wanted her to be at the helm.
Does it bother you at all to know that as you were doing what Wall Street wanted you to do vis-à-vis Elizabeth Warren, your people were begging Wall Street for money and implying that you’ve earned their support because you just turned your back on your liberal/progressive base that sent you to the White House and did Wall Street’s bidding?
Do these simultaneous events trouble you from an ethical, if not legal, standpoint?
I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
