Elizabeth Warren’s Intellectual Purge

[Baldy]

Elizabeth Warren’s Intellectual Purge

President Obama has let Elizabeth Warren veto presidential appointments, and the power rush seems to have gone to her head. Now the Massachusetts Senator has forced the resignation of a Brookings Institution economist because he dared to report that new financial regulations will cost investors.

Robert Litan, a Democrat who has been affiliated with Brookings for decades, is nobody’s idea of a conservative. And he’s not philosophically opposed to financial regulation. He was among the first to endorse Ms. Warren’s proposal for an independent agency to protect financial customers. It was a terrible idea that has become worse in its execution. The 2010 Dodd-Frank law created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the rest is overbearing bureaucratic history. But the point is that Mr. Litan was an ally of Ms. Warren before her election to the Senate.

She’s not the sentimental type. In July Mr. Litan told the Senate about his research into a Labor Department plan to force investors to move from brokers to fiduciaries. Mr. Litan testified that “the benefits of the rule do not outweigh its costs. In fact, during a future market downturn, we estimate the rule could cost investors as much as $80 billion.”

He added that “the notion that all retirement investment advisers should be held to a best interest of client standard is not controversial. It’s the way the Department proposes to implement it, which because of its costs and risks, will lead to many clients going without an adviser, or if they are able to retain one, only at substantially higher costs.”

Ms. Warren likes the Labor plan because it provides more work for bureaucrats and trial lawyers. So more than two months after the hearing, still unable to rebut Mr. Litan’s economics, she has attempted an assassination of his character. In a letter to Brookings President Strobe Talbott, Ms. Warren accused Mr. Litan of, among other things, “vague” disclosure regarding the funding of his research.

[kalm]

1) The WSJ requires a subscription so I couldn't read the piece in its entirety.

2) That's not necessarily a bad thing.

3) This is a good example of how reading the WSJ editorial pages makes you dumber.

Tuesday’s resignation of Robert Litan came just one day after Warren, a Democrat, sent Brookings’ president a letter demanding to know more about the thinktank’s policies on financial conflicts and details about the communications between Litan and Capital Group, an investment firm that funded his research paper.

“He has acknowledged that he made a mistake in not following Brookings regulations designed to uphold the independence of the institution,” Brookings’ president, Strobe Talbott, said in a statement provided to Reuters.

Warren’s concerns center on a study that Litan and researcher Hal Singer jointly conducted which examined a controversial plan by the Labor Department to try to rein in conflicts posed by brokers who offer retirement advice.

The proposal has garnered fierce opposition from Wall Street, and Litan’s study concluded that the plan could harm consumers.

Litan testified about the study’s findings in a July hearing before a US Senate panel, in which he represented himself as a fellow at Brookings.

The study was conducted by Litan and Singer in their capacity as staffers for Economists Incorporated, a consulting firm.

Although his testimony and his study did disclose that Capital Group provided funding, Warren said that she later learned this was not the full story.

In a series of follow-up questions Warren sent to Litan after the hearing, she said he disclosed that Capital Group also provided feedback and editorial comments on a draft.

This, she said, ran counter to his claim at the hearing that he and Singer were “solely responsible” for the study’s conclusions.

In addition, he disclosed that Capital Group had paid Economists Inc $85,000 for the study, and his share was $38,800.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015 ... t-lobbying" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Baldy]

1) The WSJ requires a subscription so I couldn't read the piece in its entirety.

2) That's not necessarily a bad thing.

3) This is a good example of how reading the WSJ editorial pages makes you dumber.

Tuesday’s resignation of Robert Litan came just one day after Warren, a Democrat, sent Brookings’ president a letter demanding to know more about the thinktank’s policies on financial conflicts and details about the communications between Litan and Capital Group, an investment firm that funded his research paper.

“He has acknowledged that he made a mistake in not following Brookings regulations designed to uphold the independence of the institution,” Brookings’ president, Strobe Talbott, said in a statement provided to Reuters.

Warren’s concerns center on a study that Litan and researcher Hal Singer jointly conducted which examined a controversial plan by the Labor Department to try to rein in conflicts posed by brokers who offer retirement advice.

The proposal has garnered fierce opposition from Wall Street, and Litan’s study concluded that the plan could harm consumers.

Litan testified about the study’s findings in a July hearing before a US Senate panel, in which he represented himself as a fellow at Brookings.

The study was conducted by Litan and Singer in their capacity as staffers for Economists Incorporated, a consulting firm.

Although his testimony and his study did disclose that Capital Group provided funding, Warren said that she later learned this was not the full story.

In a series of follow-up questions Warren sent to Litan after the hearing, she said he disclosed that Capital Group also provided feedback and editorial comments on a draft.

This, she said, ran counter to his claim at the hearing that he and Singer were “solely responsible” for the study’s conclusions.

In addition, he disclosed that Capital Group had paid Economists Inc $85,000 for the study, and his share was $38,800.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015 ... t-lobbying" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Well worth the cost. It would be a good investment into your economic education.

Vague? Here’s the note about funding that appears on the first page of his prepared testimony, which is available on the Senate website: “The study was supported by the Capital Group, one of the largest mutual fund asset managers in the United States.” Did Ms. Warren provide that much clarity in describing her own corporate legal clients prior to her 2012 election?

Brookings is telling reporters that Mr. Litan violated a rule of the think tank. As a non-resident fellow, he was not supposed to be identified as a Brookings scholar when he testified on the Hill. But we’re told that the rule is a recent creation and that when Mr. Litan realized his mistake after the July hearing, he apologized—and that Brookings didn’t have a problem with it until this week’s letter from Senator Warren.

Remind us never to share a foxhole with Mr. Talbott. We also wonder how Brookings scholars and donors feel about letting a Democratic Senator bully their institution into stifling independent research. And what is former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke doing at Brookings while he’s also a senior adviser to Citadel, the giant hedge fund? Are his monetary musings corrupt too?

Studying regulation used to be a bipartisan exercise. Thanks to scholars like Mr. Litan, Brookings acquired a reputation for analysis that is left-of-center but not doctrinaire. The Warren agenda is to force liberal intellectuals to report that government is an unalloyed good, business is bad, and corporate sponsorship is corrupt. This is corrosive to the Democratic Party and the country.

[Chizzang]

Also this whole article and argument is an opinion piece...
Baldy attacks all opinion pieces from anywhere other then his pet locker

Everybody is entitled to their own opinion...

[Baldy]

Also this whole article and argument is an opinion piece...
Baldy attacks all opinion pieces from anywhere other then his pet locker

Everybody is entitled to their own opinion...

Touche'

But the WSJ is just a little more respected and credible than most.

[Chizzang]

Also this whole article and argument is an opinion piece...
Baldy attacks all opinion pieces from anywhere other then his pet locker

Everybody is entitled to their own opinion...

Touche'

But the WSJ is just a little more respected and credible than most.

Says who exactly..?

[Skjellyfetti]

Well worth the cost. It would be a good investment into your economic education.

Here's a tip for your economic education: don't pay for things on the internet.

WSJ allows full access to their articles if you come to them from a google search.

So, open an incognito window in your browser. Google the headline of the article. Click the link.

Save yourself $264 a year.

[CID1990]

I bow to your eminence, Baldy!

Within one page you filled your stringer with a klam (easy to catch), a SK (slightly less easy), and the ever elusive Clitzang

[kalm]

I bow to your eminence, Baldy!

Within one page you filled your stringer with a klam (easy to catch), a SK (slightly less easy), and the ever elusive Clitzang

Meh, crap from the WSJ editorial page got swatted into the stands like it typically does. This thread was over before it even got started.

[Chizzang]

I bow to your eminence, Baldy!

Within one page you filled your stringer with a klam (easy to catch), a SK (slightly less easy), and the ever elusive Clitzang

Oh i see
Its master trolling when Baldy takes an opinion piece and uses it like fact
and its just kalm and Jelly being stupid sheep when they do it

[Baldy]

I bow to your eminence, Baldy!

Within one page you filled your stringer with a klam (easy to catch), a SK (slightly less easy), and the ever elusive Clitzang

All it takes is to put Fauxcahontas' name in the title.

Three scalps all in a row.

[Baldy]

Touche'

But the WSJ is just a little more respected and credible than most.

Says who exactly..?

Men who don't have greasy ponytails and wear Birkenstocks.

[Ivytalk]

Warren did a purge? Her effect on me is downright emetic!

[Baldy]

I bow to your eminence, Baldy!

Within one page you filled your stringer with a klam (easy to catch), a SK (slightly less easy), and the ever elusive Clitzang

Oh i see
Its master trolling when Baldy takes an opinion piece and uses it like fact
and its just kalm and Jelly being stupid sheep when they do it

Clitzang...I posted an article with an , period. I didn't make any claim whatsoever.

klam and stinkjelly are stupid sheep because they think opinionated blog posts from the lunatic fringe are well researched works of journalism.

[Skjellyfetti]

klam and stinkjelly are stupid sheep because they think opinionated blog posts from the lunatic fringe are well researched works of journalism.

I just think actually paying for them is fucking retarded.

[Baldy]

Well worth the cost. It would be a good investment into your economic education.

Here's a tip for your economic education: don't pay for things on the internet.

WSJ allows full access to their articles if you come to them from a google search.

So, open an incognito window in your browser. Google the headline of the article. Click the link.

Save yourself $264 a year.

You ain't too brite, izzzya

If you know the name of a particular article, sure, but you have to know the name of the article.
The WSJ is much more than just individual articles. You have much to learn, lubejob.

[Grizalltheway]

Here's a tip for your economic education: don't pay for things on the internet.

WSJ allows full access to their articles if you come to them from a google search.

So, open an incognito window in your browser. Google the headline of the article. Click the link.

Save yourself $264 a year.

You ain't too brite, izzzya

If you know the name of a particular article, sure, but you have to know the name of the article.
The WSJ is much more than just individual articles. You have much to learn, lubejob.

So, go to the website and look at the headlines without clicking on them?

[CID1990]

I bow to your eminence, Baldy!

Within one page you filled your stringer with a klam (easy to catch), a SK (slightly less easy), and the ever elusive Clitzang

Oh i see
Its master trolling when Baldy takes an opinion piece and uses it like fact
and its just kalm and Jelly being stupid sheep when they do it

oh Im not vouching for the veracity of what baldy posted - i didnt read it

It just struck me as funny that it was so obviously outrageous that he had all three of you before the 10th reply

maybe i *should go read it

is it critical of fauxcahontas?

[Baldy]

Oh i see
Its master trolling when Baldy takes an opinion piece and uses it like fact
and its just kalm and Jelly being stupid sheep when they do it

oh Im not vouching for the veracity of what baldy posted - i didnt read it

It just struck me as funny that it was so obviously outrageous that he had all three of you before the 10th reply

maybe i *should go read it

is it critical of fauxcahontas?

Accused her of being hypocritical.

How dare they!!!!

[kalm]

oh Im not vouching for the veracity of what baldy posted - i didnt read it

It just struck me as funny that it was so obviously outrageous that he had all three of you before the 10th reply

maybe i *should go read it

is it critical of fauxcahontas?

Accused her of being hypocritical.

How dare they!!!!