Last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren stumped some of the biggest Wall Street regulators during a Senate hearing with very simple questions. This week, a clip from that hearing with the regulators has gone viral, attracting nearly 1 million views on the Senator's own YouTube channel as of press.
During the hearing, Sen. Warren told the heads of the regulatory agencies she feared, "Too big to fail has become too big for trial." She pointed to the number of settlements with major firms versus the relatively few trials against the banks.
She would have been on the other side of the conversation had things been different in Washington.
Sen. Warren was President Obama's nominee to run the newly-formed Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, but her nomination was blocked by Republicans in Congress. Their opposition helped make Elizabeth Warren a populist champion for the middle class.
Sen. Warren has been active speaking out against Wall Street and the financial institutions that helped tank the economy in 2008. In 2012, she defeated then-Sen. Scott Brown, despite Brown receiving tens of millions in campaign contributions from Wall Street firms.
Wall Street lobbyists put pressure on Senate leaders to ensure Sen. Warren did not end up on the Senate Banking Committee which oversees banks and financial institutions. Leadership did not bow to the pressure of the big banks.
HSBC paid a record fine of $1.9 billion for conducting business with Iran and several terrorist organizations. No one was taken to trial or arrested for their involvement in a massive money laundering scheme.
Sen. Warren's name has been mentioned as a possible 2016 candidate for the Democratic nomination, despite having been in Congress less than 90 days. The prospect of a President Warren has some on Wall Street shaking in their Italian loafers.
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