Former Reagan Solicitor General Endorses Elizabeth Warren

by Stuart Shapiro

Charles Fried penned an op-ed today (h/t Kos) endorsing Elizabeth Warren for administrator of the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Agency.  What’s more, he argues that Obama should avoid the controversy in the Senate that would surely follow her nomination by giving her a recess appointment.

Capitalism and markets depend on the morality, honesty, and good faith of those who participate in them. Markets function best and deliver prosperity when they are honest and the law enforces that honesty; dishonesty, fraud, and official corruption are the poisons that keep markets in many parts of the world from delivering the goods.

That’s where Elizabeth Warren comes in. Those who are lobbying hard against her nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Agency are the same people who lobbied against financial reform legislation and lost. They paint her as the enemy of capitalism and free markets. Nothing could be further from the truth: She is the enemy of dishonesty, abuse, and just plain theft.

Amen Brother!  Not something I’d expect from a noted conservative thinker and solicitor general under President Reagan. This is one of the most important appointments Obama will make (the first head of an agency can set its course for a decade) and there is no reason to beat around the bush on it.  As Fried says, markets work when there are clear rules and honesty is rewarded.  Let’s get markets working the way they are supposed to again.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.