Presumptive nominee and name calling bully, Donald “Drumpf” Trump took the wrong person on in a Twitter battle when he started calling Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren goofy. She didn’t sit back she took him to the principal’s office.
The Federal Reserve Chair is the single most powerful economic post in American government. The person who holds that position has tremendous influence over the direction of the economy and is imbued with broad regulatory authority over the nation’s financial system. When President Barack Obama wanted to appoint Larry Summers to that post in 2013, Warren galvanized opposition to the appointment on the grounds that Summers had a long history of supporting bank deregulation. A team of Senate Democrats including Warren blocked his nomination, and Obama named Janet Yellen to the job instead. Warren prevented investment banker Anthony Weiss from getting a Treasury post a year later (he’s stuck in an advisory role instead of holding an undersecretary job).
When Fed General Counsel Scott Alvarez spouted deregulatory views at a banking conference, Warren forced Yellen to distance herself from the agency’s top lawyer at a public hearing. Alvarez — long viewed as a Wall Street-friendly influence at the central bank— has been much quieter since.
Warren was the chief congressional advocate for a new Obama rule requiring investment advisors to manage their funds in the best interests of their clients. Republicans and many Democrats balked at the rule amid pressure from Wall Street, which wanted to let managers steer clients into investments that just happened to offer perks for the financial advisers. Warren humiliated opponents of the rule by highlighting the conflicts of interest inherent in the present system and the related dodgy business practices. The rule is now law.
The bullying act won’t work against Sen. Warren, a woman who won’t shy away from a war with words.