One of the good folks-Elizabeth Warren

There still are a few people fighting the good fight--Warren is a prime example.

"Bankruptcy is a Case in Which Literally, the Lobbyists Wrote the Bill"

Talking to Elizabeth Warren

By HARRY KREISLER

Elizabeth Warren was born in Oklahoma in 1949, professes law at Harvard Law School and is currently chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel to investigate the banking bailout, formally known as the Troubled Assets Relief Program. She’s also the prime advocate for the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which Congress is now considering, but which may well be suffocated in the embrace of the Federal Reserve. Warren's has been cited as among names being considered as Supreme Court nominees to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.and in the opinion of the editors of CounterPunch would be the best choice. AC/JSC

Kreisler: Where were you born and raised?

Elizabeth Warren: Born and raised in Oklahoma.

Looking back, how do you think your parents shaped your thinking about the world?

Well, my parents were from Depression-era, dust-bowl Oklahoma, and that shapes your life growing up. I was the last of four children—I have three much older brothers—and by the time I came along I was really kind of the second family for my parents. They hadn’t recovered from the Depression, and I guess in many ways they never did. Those were the stories that permeated my childhood: what it was like to have seven years of drought, what it was like when nobody had any money, what it was like when all your neighbors left to go to California or someplace where they thought there might be jobs. My parents hung on, they stayed, and my father worked a series of different jobs. He was a maintenance man in an apartment house—it was his last job—but they always saw themselves as middle-class people. For them the distinction was that they used good English and they didn’t say “ain’t.” Those were important indicia of middle-classness for my folks. They believed in education and were very proud of this little daughter they had. more