Elizabeth Warren on the Great Economic Battlefield: Protecting the Middle Class from Financial Predators

A new Consumer Financial Protection Agency can save the middle class. Elizabeth Warren explains how.

January 28, 2010

For years, federal banking regulators at the Office of Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and the Federal Reserve helped the nation's largest banks wage war on the U.S. middle class. But President Barack Obama wants to change all that with a new regulator that answers exclusively to consumers, not bank balance sheets. AlterNet economics editor Zach Carter discussed the proposal to establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) with the woman who came up with the idea, Harvard University Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren. After defending the American middle class for decades, Warren currently chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.