Elizabeth Warren assigned to Senate banking committee

Incoming Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has been assigned a seat on the
Senate Banking Committee in a move that will not please her opponents on
Wall Street.

Warren has been a harsh critic of Wall Street practices, and the
securities and investment industry spent $3 million in an unsuccessful
effort to boost her Republican opponent Scott Brown in the Massachusetts
Senate race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The
financial/insurance/real estate sector spent another $6 million to boost
Brown. Those sectors combined spent less than $1 million on Warren's
behalf.

Warren is an architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a
federal agency created as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform
bill. Opposition from Wall Street and Republicans in Congress helped
keep Warren from being named the head of that agency last year.

The Banking Committee oversees the implementation of Dodd-Frank and
other regulation of the banking industry.

Warren will be near the bottom of the totem pole in terms of Senate
seniority, which will limit what she will be able to accomplish
legislatively. But her position on the committee will boost her efforts
to make the case that "the game is rigged" to put Wall Street and the
wealthy ahead of the middle class.

Warren joins another progressive, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, on the
Banking Committee. Other Democrats on the committee, including Sens.
Charles Schumer of New York and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, are more
closely aligned with Wall Street.

- - -

Warren will bring the committee around to doing what it supposed to do,
though I doubt she will be able to push legislation or regulation that
busts up the big banks.