The bright side (if there is a bright side) is that Warren will be able to speak more freely if she’s not the head of the agency, and we could use some adults in the conversation right now. A giant manufactured debt ceiling crisis is being used to force Shock Doctrine austerity on the country. I hope somebody will ask her how she’d handle things if she was President. What do you think Elizabeth Warren would do if she was in Obama’s shoes right now?

According to Public Citizen, there’s nothing stopping the President from circumventing the Congress for recess appointments of key positions, including Elizabeth Warren for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And they have the Constitutional passages to prove it.

Next week is the State of the Union address, and I thought I’d offer a little last minute, unsolicited advice to the president and the White House speechwriters. Some may think it presumptuous, but as one of “we, the people,” I think it’s allowable. It’s not like they have to take the advice, after all . . . but it sure would be nice to see and hear something like this.

At FDL News, David Dayen covers an article on Elizabeth Warren in which she argues, correctly, that if the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had been up and running years ago, much of the banking/mortgage fraud could/would have been prevented.

That’s fine as far as it goes. But there’s something missing from the polite Ms. Warren’s telling.

I’m cautiously optimistic with the dual appointment of Elizabeth Warren to be Assistant to the President to work at Treasury to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Board. Progressives finally won something from this Administration. Maybe. But we’re only going to be able to keep it if we continue to make noise.

While the White House continues to vacillate on Elizabeth Warren’s appointment to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, I wonder whether the roughly 525,000 homeowners who have lost their homes to foreclosure since the Financial Reform bill was signed think that there’s no urgency to having a consumer advocate at Treasury?

I think you can read Sen. Chris Dodd’s comments as desperate bargaining against a CFPB nomination for Elizabeth Warren. Yet even Dodd has to announce support if she gets the call.