‘Did You Have Your Eyes Stitched Closed?’ Warren Blasts Former Fed Official
(COMMON DREAMS) Deirdre Fulton, April 6, 2016 — at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Tuesday—which was described as “little more than another attempt to rail against Wall Street regulation”—U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren spent seven minutes tearing into former Federal Reserve deputy director Leonard Chanin, a man she said “might have one of the worst track records in history on this issue.”
The hearing, Warren said on her Facebook page, was called by Republicans ” to talk about why we should roll back the rules on mortgages and credit cards because they’re just too costly for the banks.”
Chanin, who now works for a private law firm advising big banks, was summoned as a key witness by the GOP. But Warren called into question his credentials on the matter.
Citing the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a bipartisan group charged with determining what caused the 2008 economic meltdown, the Democrat from Massachusetts lambasted the Federal Reserve’s “pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages” as the “prime example” of “the kind of hands-off regulatory approach” that allowed the crisis to occur.