I Still Think That The Appointment of Elizabeth Warren is an Exercise in PR, Not Real Change, But …

Both Felix Salmon and Barney Frank seem to think that this is the real deal, with Felix noting that, "she has the authority to get the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau up and running as quickly as she can," and Representative Frank is saying that, "There’s no possibility she would take something like this unless she was fully empowered to do the job."

Me, I'm with On the other side Yves Smith's analysis, which says that this is all theater to create the illusion of Obama as a financial reformer:

• While the bureau is organized under the Treasury, and before it is placed under the Federal Reserve, it has no rule making authority.
• The organization is operating for an organization, the Federal Reserve that is not only, "subservient to the regulator that is in charge of looking out for the industry," but is in large part owned by the industry. (look at the structure of the regional Fed banks, they are owned by the big banks)
• This is an admission that she will not be appointed to the position, so she is already a bit of a lame duck, and will be completely one as soon as someone is nominated for the post.
• She has admitted that she has no intention of serving as head of the CPFB, which means that she is even more of a lame duck.
• Many of the organizational and personnel decisions will be deferred to whoever is the appointee.
• Once a nominee is named, she becomes completely irrelevant.
• Geithner and Summers still run the show, and are who Obama listens to.^*

I'm with Ms. Smith's last 'graph:

Needless to say, it would be better if I were proven wrong, but it looks like Warren has made a Faustian bargain. I can only hope if that is the case that she moves quickly to cut her losses.

Simply put, how many times has the Obama administration taken the side of Main Street over Wall Street?

I'll give you hint, it's a non-positive integer.

She will be out in 6 months, and my guess is that she will discover that she cannot get her phone calls answered on November 3.

^*But remember, the Cossacks work for the Czar.