Elizabeth Warren

For other people named Elizabeth Warren, see Elizabeth Warren (disambiguation).

Elizabeth Warren
File:Photo-warren-s.jpg
Special Advisor for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
In office September 17, 2010 – August 1, 2011
President	Barack Obama
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Raj Date
Chairperson of the Congressional Oversight Panel
In office November 25, 2008 – November 15, 2010
Deputy	Damon Silvers
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Ted Kaufman
Personal details
Born	Elizabeth Herring (1949-06-22) June 22, 1949 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S.
Political party	Democratic Party (1995–present)
Other political affiliations	Republican Party (Before 1995)
Spouse(s)	Jim Warren (1968–1978) Bruce Mann (1980–present)
Children	Amelia Alexander
Alma mater	George Washington University University of Houston Rutgers University, Newark
Website	Harvard biography Campaign website

Elizabeth Warren (born June 22, 1949) is an American bankruptcy law expert, policy advocate, Harvard Law School professor, and Democratic Party candidate in the 2012 United States Senate election in Massachusetts. She has written several academic and popular books concerning the American economy and personal finance. She contributed to the oversight of the 2008 U.S. bailout program, and also led the conception and establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Warren attended The George Washington University and the University of Houston. She received a J.D. from Rutgers School of Law–Newark in 1976. Warren taught law at several universities and was listed by the Association of American Law Schools as a minority law professor throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the wake of the U.S. financial crisis, Warren served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Assets Relief Program in 2008. She later served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under U.S. President Barack Obama.

Early life and education

Elizabeth Herring was born June 22, 1949, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to working class parents Pauline (née Reed) and Donald Jones Herring. She was the Herrings' fourth child, with three older brothers. When Warren was twelve, her father, a janitor, had a heart attack, which led to a pay cut, medical bills, and eventually the loss of their car. Her mother answered phones at Sears and Warren worked as a waitress.

At Northwest Classen High School she was named "Oklahoma's top high-school debater". She received a debate-team scholarship to George Washington University at the age of 16. Initially aspiring to be a teacher, she left GWU after two years to marry her high-school boyfriend Jim Warren. She moved to Houston to be with Jim, who was a NASA engineer. She enrolled in the University of Houston where she graduated in 1970 with a degree in speech pathology and audiology. She taught children with disabilities for a year in a public school. However, she had not taken the required education courses to get a teaching certificate (she previously taught under an "emergency certificate"). She decided she no longer wanted to pursue education as a career. She moved to New Jersey and she was pregnant with her first child. She decided to stay at home.

Warren then enrolled at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark, where she served as an editor of the Rutgers Law Review, and was a summer associate at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft's. Shortly before graduating, she became pregnant with her second child. She received her law degree in 1976. She worked from home, writing wills and doing real estate closings. She claims to be “the first nursing mother to take a bar exam in the state of New Jersey.” Winnie Comfort of the New Jersey Judiciary has said there is no way to verify Warren’s claim. Women have been taking the New Jersey bar exam since 1895, but their nursing habits were never tracked.

She and Jim had two children. They got divorced in 1978. They had a daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, and a son, Alexander Warren. Today they have three grandchildren. In 1980, Warren married Bruce Mann, also a Harvard law professor. She has taught Sunday School and cites Methodist founder John Wesley as an inspiration.

Academic career

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s she taught law at several universities throughout the country, while researching bankruptcy and middle-class personal finance. In 1978 Congress had passed a law that made it easier for companies and individuals to declare bankruptcy and Warren decided "to set out to prove they were all a bunch of cheaters... I was going to expose these people who were taking advantage of the rest of us". However, she instead found that the vast majority of those in bankruptcy courts were from hardworking middle-class families: people who had lost their jobs or had family breakups or illnesses that had wiped out their savings. "It changed my vision," she said.

According to her CV, she taught at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark (1977–78), the University of Houston Law Center (1978–83), the University of Michigan (visiting, 1985), and the University of Texas School of Law (1981–87). She also worked as a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin (1983–87). She joined the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1987, where she became the William A Schnader Professor of Commercial Law in 1990. She joined Harvard Law School in 1992 as the Robert Braucher Visiting Professor of Commercial Law, and began a permanent position as the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law in 1995.

In 1995 Warren was asked to advise the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. She helped to draft the commission's report and then spent several years opposing legislation meant to severely restrict the right of consumers to file for bankruptcy. Warren and others opposing the legislation were not successful and in 2005 the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was passed by Congress.

Warren appeared in the documentary film Maxed Out in 2006, has appeared several times on Dr. Phil to talk about money and families, has been a guest on The Daily Show, is interviewed frequently on cable news networks, appears in Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, has appeared on the Charlie Rose talk show, and has appeared on the Real Time With Bill Maher talk show. She has also appeared on the PBS show NOW.

Warren in 2010 at a Women in Finance symposium held at the U.S. Treasury.

From November 2006 to November 2010, Warren was a member of the FDIC Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion, which advises the FDIC "on important initiatives focused on expanding access to banking services by underserved populations". She is a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference, an independent organization which advises the U.S. Congress on bankruptcy law. She is a former Vice-President of the American Law Institute and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 2005 to 2008, Warren and her law students wrote a blog called Warren Reports, part of Josh Marshall's TPMCafe.

Popular works

In addition to writing more than 100 scholarly articles and six academic books, Warren has written several best-selling books, including All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan, coauthored with her daughter, Amelia Tyagi.

Warren and Tyagi also wrote The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke. Warren and Tyagi point out that a fully employed worker today earns less inflation-adjusted income than a fully employed worker did 30 years ago. To increase their income, families have sent a second parent into the workforce. Although families spend less today on clothing, appliances, and other consumption, the costs of core expenses such as mortgages, health care, transportation, and child care have increased dramatically. The result is that even with two-income earners, families are no longer able to save and have incurred greater and greater debt.

In an article in The New York Times, Jeff Madrick said of Warren's book:

The upshot is that two-income families often have even less income left over today than did an equivalent single-income family 30 years ago, even when they make almost twice as much. And they go deeper in debt. The authors find that it is not the free-spending young or the incapacitated elderly who are declaring bankruptcy so much as families with children... their main thesis is undeniable. Typical families often cannot afford the high-quality education, health care and neighborhoods required to be middle class today. More clearly than anyone else, I think, Ms. Warren and Ms. Tyagi have shown how little attention the nation and our government have paid to the way Americans really live.

In an article in Time magazine by Maryanna Murray Buechner, "Parent Trap" (subtitled "Want to go bust? Have a kid. Educate same. Why the middle class never had it so bad"), Buechner said of Warren's book:

For families looking for ways to cope, Warren and Tyagi mainly offer palliatives: Buy a cheaper house. Squirrel away a six-month cash cushion. Yeah, right. But they also know that there are no easy solutions. Readers who are already committed to a house and parenthood will find little to mitigate the deflating sense that they have nowhere to go but down.

In 2005, David Himmelstein and Warren published a study on bankruptcy and medical bills, which said that half of all families filing for bankruptcy did so in the aftermath of a serious medical problem. The finding was particularly noteworthy because 75 percent of families who fit that description had medical insurance. This study was widely cited in academic studies and policy debates, though some have challenged the study's methods and offered alternative interpretations of the data.

TARP oversight

On November 14, 2008, Warren was appointed by United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to chair the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the implementation of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. The Panel releases monthly oversight reports that evaluate the government bailout and related programs. The Panel's monthly reports under Warren's leadership covered foreclosure mitigation, consumer and small business lending, commercial real estate, AIG, bank stress tests, the impact of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) on the financial markets, government guarantees, the automotive industry, and many other topics. The Panel has also released special reports on financial regulatory reform and farm loans. For each report, Warren released a video on the Congressional Oversight Panel's website explaining key findings.

In an interview at Newsweek, Warren commented, "To restore some basic sanity to the financial system, we need two central changes: fix broken consumer-credit markets and end guarantees for the big players that threaten our entire economic system."

On July 29, 2011, she left her role with the agency to return to academic life at Harvard Law School. Her departing address indicated how she first became involved:

Four years ago, I submitted an article to Democracy Journal that argued for a new government agency called the Financial Product Safety Commission. I threw myself into that piece because I felt strongly that a new consumer agency would make the credit markets work better for American families and strengthen the economic security of the middle class... I leave this agency, but not this fight... the issues we deal with – a middle class that has been squeezed and business models built on tricks and traps – are deeply personal to me, and they always will be.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Warren stands next to President Barack Obama as he announces the nomination of Richard Cordray as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during a statement at the White House.

Warren has long advocated for the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a watchdog agency designed to "make basic financial practices such as taking out a mortgage or loan more clear and transparent while ferreting out unfair lending practices," according to CNN. In an interview with the Huffington Post, Warren said "My first choice is a strong consumer agency. My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor". Through Warren's efforts, the bureau was established by the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law by Obama in July 2010. For the first year after the bill's signing, Warren worked on implementation of the bureau as a Special Assistant to the President in anticipation of the agency's formal opening. While liberal groups and consumer advocacy groups pushed for Obama to nominate Warren as the agency's permanent director, Warren was strongly opposed by financial institutions which had criticized Warren as overly aggressive in pursuing regulations, and by the Republican members of Congress. Furthermore, she did not have the strong support of the Obama administration, particularly Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. In July 2011, Obama instead announced the nomination of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray as the bureau's director, subject to Congressional approval. However, in December his nomination was blocked by a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate. Until a director is confirmed, the agency will not gain the full measure of its powers. It can supervise the compliance of banks with existing laws, but the Dodd-Frank financial legislation dictates that it cannot supervise other financial companies or write new rules. On 4 January 2012, President Obama named Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray the Bureau's Director in a recess appointment.

2012 US Senate run

Main article: United States Senate election in Massachusetts, 2012

On September 14, 2011, Warren declared that she intended to run for the Democratic nomination for the 2012 election in Massachusetts for the United States Senate seat currently held by incumbent Scott Brown. On September 21, a video of Warren explaining the rationale of her economic policy received attention on the Internet. EMILY's List, the nation's largest resource for women in politics, has endorsed Warren saying, "Elizabeth is a champion for progressive values and a fighter for the middle class". She has also drawn strong support from ActBlue.

Warren listed herself as a Native American in the Association of American Law Schools directory of law professors, from 1986 to 1995. The Brown campaign and the Native American Rights Fund questioned her motives for the claim and its propriety. Genealogist Chris Child at the New England Historic Genealogical Society has researched Warren's claimed native ancestry and states that more research has to be done to make a full determination. Warren said that she had heard family stories about her Cherokee ancestors her entire life ("my mother told me so") and had hoped it would create opportunities to meet people like her. But according to Warren, such opportunities never materialized and she eventually "stopped checking it off".

Recognition

Warren at the 2009 100 Most Influential People in the World reception.

Since about 2009, Warren has been recognized by several institutions as a major political figure. In 2009, the Boston Globe named her the Bostonian of the Year, and the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts honored her with the Lelia J. Robinson Award. She was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2009 and 2010. The National Law Journal has repeatedly named Warren as one of the Fifty Most Influential Women Attorneys in America, and in 2010 they honored her as one of the 40 most influential attorneys of the decade.

Warren has been recognized for her dynamic teaching style. In 2009, Warren became the first professor in Harvard's history to win the law school's teaching award twice. The Sacks-Freund Teaching Award was voted on by the graduating class in honor of "her teaching ability, openness to student concerns, and contributions to student life at Harvard." Warren also has won awards from her students at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, and the University of Houston Law Center. She delivered the commencement address at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark in May 2011, where she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree and was conferred membership into the Order of the Coif.

Publications

Selected articles

• Warren, E. (1987). "Bankruptcy Policy". The University of Chicago Law Review. 54 (3): 775–814. JSTOR 1599826.
• Warren, E. (1992). "The Untenable Case for Repeal of Chapter 11". The Yale Law Journal. 102 (2): 437–479. JSTOR 796843.
• Warren, E. (1993). "Bankruptcy Policymaking in an Imperfect World". Michigan Law Review. 92 (2): 336–387. JSTOR 1289668.
• "Principled Approach to Consumer Bankruptcy". American Bankruptcy Law Journal. 71: 483. 1997.
• "The Bankruptcy Crisis". Indiana Law Journal. 73 (4): 1079. Fall 1998.
• Warren, Elizabeth; Westbrook, Jay Lawrence (January 2000). "Financial Characteristics of Businesses in Bankruptcy". SSRN Electronic Journal. 73: 499. doi:10.2139/ssrn.194750. {{cite journal}}: More than one of |work= and |journal= specified (help)
• Himmelstein, DU; Warren, E; Thorne, D; Woolhandler, S (2005). "Illness and injury as contributors to bankruptcy". Health affairs (Project Hope). Suppl Web Exclusives: W5–63–W5–73. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.w5.63. PMID 15689369.
• "The Vanishing Middle Class". In Edwards, John, ed. (2007). Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream. The New Press. ISBN 978-1-59558-176-1.
• Himmelstein, David U.; Warren, Elizabeth; Thorne, Deborah; Woolhandler, Steffie J. (2005). "Illness and Injury as Contributors to Bankruptcy". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.664565.
• Himmelstein, DU; Thorne, D; Warren, E; Woolhandler, S (2009). "Medical bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a national study". The American Journal of Medicine. 122 (8): 741–6. doi:10.1016/j.amjmed.2009.04.012. PMID 19501347.

Books

• As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America. Oxford University Press. 1989. ISBN 978-0-19-505578-8. (with Teresa A. Sullivan and Jay Westbrook)
• The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt. Yale University Press. 2001. ISBN 978-0-300-09171-7. (with Teresa A. Sullivan and Jay Westbrook)
• The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke. Basic Books. 2004. ISBN 978-0-465-09090-7. (with Amelia Warren Tyagi)
• All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan. Simon and Schuster. 2006. ISBN 978-0-7432-6988-9. (with Amelia Warren Tyagi)
• Casenote Legal Briefs: Commercial Law. Aspen Publishers. 2006. ISBN 978-0-7355-5827-4. (with Lynn M. LoPucki, Daniel Keating, Ronald Mann, and Normal Goldenberg)
• The Law of Debtors and Creditors: Text, Cases, and Problems (6th ed.). Aspen Publishers. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7355-7626-1. (with Jay Westbrook)
• Chapter 11: Reorganizing American Businesses (Essentials). Aspen Publishers. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7355-7654-4.
• Secured Credit: A Systems Approach. Wolters Kluwer. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7355-7649-0. (with Lynn M. LoPucki)

See also

• Social class in the United States

External links

• Elizabeth Warren U.S. Senate campaign website
• Elizabeth Warren at Harvard Law School
  • Bibliography
• Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
• Profile at Vote Smart
• Elizabeth Warren collected news and commentary at Salon.com
• Financial information at OpenSecrets.org

Interviews and articles

• Generation, Gap, and interview with Elizabeth Warrn in Guernica Magazine
• Elizabeth Warren: a tough sheriff in finance's Wild West, The Daily Telegraph
• Warren Winning Means You Won't Sell It If You Can't Explain It, Bloomberg
• In fight over credit rules, she wields a plan, Boston Globe
• "The TARP Queen: Why we should all bow before Elizabeth Warren (even if you've never heard of her)". Slate. Archived from the original on April 27, 2009.
• Bank Buster, Mother Jones
• The Debt Crusader: Inspired by Dr. Phil, Harvard's Elizabeth Warren has gone to D.C. to change the way America borrows, Newsweek
• Elizabeth Warren on the Economy, NOW on PBS
• Video: Elizabeth Warren, New Yorker, Nov. 16, 2009
• Interview with Yahoo! Finance, Oct. 16, 2009
• Voices of Power Video: Elizabeth Warren, Washington Post, Oct. 8, 2009
• Interview with Elizabeth Warren from Frontline
• Elizabeth Warren on NPR link to full interview for show of May 8, 2009
• UCTV programs with Elizabeth Warren
  • The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class: Higher Risks, Lower Rewards, and a Shrinking Safety Net
  • Conversations with History: Law, Politics, and the Coming Collapse of the Middle Class with Elizabeth Warren
• Warren says Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is Obama's "Strongest Financial Reform" – video report by Democracy Now!