Ezra Klein & Matt Yglesias react to Elizabeth Warren's Confronting Fed Chair Yellen & TPP Comments [View all]

Elizabeth Warren is furious over Obama’s proposed trade deal
Updated by Ezra Klein on February 26, 2015, 10:30 a.m. ET

(Nice Video of Warren Confronting Fed Chair, Janet Yellen at the link)

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/26/8114291/elizabeth-warren-tpp

Elizabeth Warren has a talent for making huge fights out of obscure nominations and economic policy provisions. On Tuesday, Warren took aim at Scott Alvarez, the Federal Reserve's powerful general counsel, for his views on banking regulation. Virtually no one knows who Alvarez is. But he's arguably one of the five or six most powerful economic policymakers in Washington. He's the Leo McGarry of the Fed. Warren is unusual in possessing the policy chops to know that Alvarez matters as well as the political heat to make liberals care about him.But making Scott Alvarez a household name is child's play compared to Warren's latest fight: whipping up outrage over the Investor-State Dispute Settlement provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal. In a Washington Post op-ed today, Warren writes, "ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court."



Warren goes on to argue that the rules of that arbitration end up favoring corporations both in the complaints that get hard and the decisions that get rendered. Interestingly, this isn't just a liberal crusade: the libertarian think tank Cato has a lengthy brief slamming the ISDS as "an unnecessary, unreasonable, and unwise provision to include in trade agreements" that, among other sins, "is not even essential to the task of freeing trade."

This puts Warren on a direct collision course with the Obama administration: passing the TPP deal is one of their top priorities this year.

So can Warren get people to care about ISDS? Maybe! As my colleague Matt Yglesias wrote in his newsletter last night, Warren "has a unique knack among today's elected officials for seizing on things that are languishing in obscurity and making them blow up. The greatest trick the special interests ever played was getting the world to stop paying attention. Warren makes people pay attention."

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/26/8114291/elizabeth-warren-tpp

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Why Elizabeth Warren is so great

by Matt Yglesias

I don't always agree with Elizabeth Warren, but Danielle Kurtzleben did a piece for us this week that I think shows what makes her such a vital figure. At Janet Yellen's monetary policy hearing, Warren took aim at the Federal Reserve's General Counsel, Scott Alvarez. Alvarez is one of the people with the highest importance-to-fame ratios in the whole American government. His existence — to say nothing of his work — is incredibly obscure. But Warren used her considerable celebrity and her dorky charisma to shine a light on it.

And she has a unique knack among today's elected officials for seizing on things that are languishing in obscurity and making them blow up. The greatest trick the special interests ever played was getting the world to stop paying attention. Warren makes people pay attention, and it's great.

http://tinyletter.com/mattyglesias/letters/i-m-writing-a-newsletter