The dream world of Villager punditry is truly something to behold. Take William Cohan who has a suggestion in the Washington Post for Elizabeth Warren, who has just declared her candidacy to run for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts currently held by Republican Scott Brown.
Seven weeks removed from the political reality that cost her a job as one of the nation’s best-known — and controversial — advocates for consumers and the middle class, Elizabeth Warren now officially wants to return to Washington as the junior senator from Massachusetts. But if she is really serious about wanting to help working Americans and reform Wall Street, Warren should consider a different line of work: She should get a job as a partner at Goldman Sachs.
The idea isn’t as crazy as it sounds.
No, it is as crazy as it sounds, if not crazier. The idea that Elizabeth Warren, after railing for years at how banks like Goldman Sachs have been profiting while impoverishing the middle classes by taking advantage of deregulation and lax oversight by the government, could simply pick up the phone and ask Goldman Sachs to hire her to reform it, and that Goldman Sachs would offer her a partnership in order to reform itself is doubly bizarre.
The only way that this could happen is if there is cynical collusion between Warren and Goldman Sachs in which Warren is just another cynical academic on the make and agrees to uses her reputation for integrity to get a high-paying job providing cover for Goldman Sachs for the pretense that it is serious about reforming itself. But if that is the case, then this demolishes Cohan’s argument that this move would help in reforming Goldman Sachs and Wall Street.
What amazes me is that these Villager pundits actually get paid to churn out this drivel.
Just made a contribution to her campaign -- and I live in Florida. Whether she wins or loses almost doesn’t matter; either way, the battle lines are being drawn even more clearly and the oligarchy will have to show its hand. I’m really curious to see just how ugly they’re going to be against this genuinely decent woman.
As for the Post article, Cohan is probably just stirring the pot, but if he actually believes what he says he needs to watch Inside Job a couple of times and think about how well self-regulation worked out. It’s possible that the article is his attempt at cynicism, since this game of musical-chairs has been going on for so long, but I see no reason to give him that much credit. Warren isn’t playing that game, and what Cohan should be writing about is why no-one else of stature has the courage to join her.
Shalom Mano,
If self-regulation worked, we wouldn’t need gawds.
B’shalom,
Jeff