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A treasury is either

• A government department related to finance and taxation.
• A place where currency or precious items (gold, diamonds, etc.) is/are kept.

The term was first used in Classical times to describe the votive buildings erected to house gifts to the gods, such as the Siphnian Treasury in Delphi or many similar buildings erected in Olympia, Greece by competing city-states to impress others during the ancient Olympic Games. In Ancient Greece treasuries were almost always physically incorporated within religious buildings such as temples, thus making state funds sacrosanct and adding moral constraints to the penal ones to those who would have access to these funds.

The head of a treasury is typically known as a treasurer. This position may not necessarily have the final control over the actions of the treasury, particularly if they are not an elected representative.

The adjective for a treasury is normally "treasurial". The adjective "tresorial" can also be used, but this normally means pertaining to a treasurer.

Examples of treasuries[link]

Treasury[link]

In the United Kingdom, Her Majesty's Treasury is overseen by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The traditional honorary title of First Lord of the Treasury is held by the Prime Minister. Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs administers the taxation system.

In the United States, the Treasurer reports to an executive-appointed Secretary of the Treasury. The IRS is the revenue agency of the US Department of Treasury.

Ministry of finance[link]

In many other countries, the treasury is called the "ministry of finance" and the head is known as the finance minister. Examples include New Zealand, Canada, Malaysia, Singapore, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Japan. In some other countries, a "treasury" will exist alongside a separate "Ministry of Finance", with divided functions (Ukraine).

Both[link]

In the Australian federal government a treasurer and a finance minister co-exist. The Department of the Treasury is responsible for drafting the government budget, economic policy (except monetary policy), some market regulation and revenue policy (which is administered by the Australian Taxation Office). The Finance Minister, who manages the Department of Finance and Deregulation, is responsible for budget management, government expenditure and market deregulation.

The government of Poland includes the Ministry of Finance as well as the Ministry of State Treasury. It was the same in Italy before the creation of the united Ministry of Economy.

See also[link]

Bank Finance Minister Fiscus Mint

Treasury management UK Treasury US Treasury External links[link] Look up treasury in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. [1] This finance-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Paul Craig Roberts (born April 3, 1939) is an American economist and a columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as a co-founder of Reaganomics.^[1] He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service who has testified before congressional committees on 30 occasions on issues of economic policy.

Roberts is a critic of Israel, calling Gaza "the world's largest concentration camp" populated by people who were "driven out of Palestine so that Israel could steal their land." Roberts has been a critic of both Democratic and Republican administrations. Although Roberts praised Ronald Reagan, he has compared supporters of George W. Bush to "brownshirts with the same low intelligence and morals as Hitler's enthusiastic supporters." He has opposed the War on Drugs and the War on Terror stating it has "made widows and orphans of millions of Muslims". He believes the official explanation for the events on 9/11 is a "scientific impossibility".

Publication[link]

He has written or co-written eight books, contributed chapters to numerous books and has published many articles in journals of scholarship.

His writings frequently appear on OpEdNews, Alex Jones' Prisonplanet.com, Antiwar.com, the web site VDARE.com. LewRockwell.com, CounterPunch. He is a contributor to the American Free Press which is critical of the New World Order and Israel. Roberts has been featured as a guest on the Political Cesspool radio show.^[2]

In order to create a coherent uncensored and unedited archive of Robert's writings, paulcraigroberts.org ^[3] was created by the The Institute For Political Economy and appeared in January 2012. His articles continue to appear in other venues, but are first available on this website along with links to relevant videos and books.

Biography[link]

Roberts is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He was a post-graduate at the University of California, Berkeley and at Merton College, Oxford University.^[4] His first scholarly article (Classica et Mediaevalia) was a reformulation of "The Pirenne Thesis."

In Alienation and the Soviet Economy (1971), Roberts explained the Soviet economy as the outcome of a struggle between inordinate aspirations and a refractory reality. He argued that the Soviet economy was not centrally planned, but that its institutions, such as material supply, reflected the original Marxist aspirations to establish a non-market mode of production. In Marx's Theory of Exchange (1973), Roberts argued that Marx was an organizational theorist whose materialist conception of history ruled out good will as an effective force for change.

From 1975 to 1978, Roberts served on the congressional staff. As economic counsel to Congressman Jack Kemp^[5] he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill (which became the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981) and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy.^[4] His influential 1978 article for Harper's,^[6] while economic counsel to Senator Orrin Hatch,^[7] had Wall Street Journal editor Robert L. Bartley give him an editorial slot, which he had until 1980.^[8] He was a senior fellow in political economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, then part of Georgetown University.^[5]

From early 1981 to January 1982 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. President Ronald Reagan and Treasury Secretary Donald Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy."^[4] Roberts resigned in January 1982 to become the first occupant of the William E. Simon Chair for Economic Policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, then part of Georgetown University.^[9] He held this position until 1993. He went on to write The Supply-Side Revolution (1984), in which he explained the reformulation of macroeconomic theory and policy that he had helped to create.

He was a Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. He was a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.^[4]

In The New Color Line (1995), Roberts argued that the Civil Rights Act was subverted by the bureaucrats who applied it and, by being used to create status-based privileges, became a threat to the Fourteenth Amendment in whose name it was passed. In The Tyranny of Good Intentions (2000), Roberts documented what he saw as the erosion of the Blackstonian legal principles that ensure that law is a shield of the innocent and not a weapon in the hands of government.

Recognition[link]

In 1987 the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor on March 20, 1987. The French Minister of Economics and Finance, Edouard Balladur, came from France to present the medal to Roberts at a ceremony at the French Ambassador's residence in Washington, D.C. President Reagan sent OMB Director Jim Miller to the ceremony with a letter of congratulation.^[4]

In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism from the American Legislative Exchange Council. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists in the United States.^[4]

Views[link]

Criticism of Bush[link]

Roberts opposed the Iraq War and writes frequently on the subject. On May 18, 2005, in response to the publication of the "Downing Street memo," Roberts wrote an article calling for Bush's impeachment for lying to Congress about the case for war.

Roberts was also a critic of a potential Bush administration attack on Iran. In an August 15, 2005 article, he states "Bush...dismisses all facts and assurances and is willing to attack Iran based on nothing but Israel's paranoia."

Although his criticisms of Bush often seem to align him with the political left, Roberts continues to praise Ronald Reagan and to endorse many of Reagan's policies, arguing that "true conservatives" were the "first victims" of the neoconized Bush administration.^[10] He has said that supporters of George W. Bush "are brownshirts with the same low intelligence and morals as Hitler's enthusiastic supporters."^[11]

Israel[link]

In an article for Counterpunch magazine titled "Pirates of the Mediterranean", Roberts wrote that for 60 years, Israel has replicated "the 17th, 18th, and 19th century theft of American Indian lands by US settlers." Roberts repeated charges that Gaza is "the world largest concentration camp" populated by people who were "driven out of Palestine so that Israel could steal their land." He called the U.S. State Department a "puppet" of the Israelis and the U.S. itself a "puppet state" of the Israelis. He concludes the article by claiming that "there’s no money for California, or for Americans’ health care, or for the several million Americans who have lost their homes and are homeless, because Israel needs it."^[12]

The pro-Jewish [Anti-Defamation League] has criticized Dr. Roberts as promoting anti-semitism for his increasing focus on "criticism of Israel and Jews" making his writings "popular with fringe publications on both the left and the right".^[13] However, Dr. Roberts nominated Israeli peace activist Jeff Halper for the Nobel Peace Prize and he cautions against confusing a right-wing Zionist government with world Jewry. In one of his classic columns, "What Became of Western Morality?" (January 2005), he noted that it is Israeli newspapers, not American ones, that protest the Israeli government's atrocities against Palestinians:

"It is the goyim moralists who are silent, not the Jews. It is the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, not the goyim media, that provides reports of Israel’s abuse of Palestinians. Gideon Levy’s “The Neighborhood Bully Strikes Again” was published in Haaretz on Dec. 29, not in the goyim press. Levy’s words—”Once again, Israel’s violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom”—are not words that can appear in American print or TV media. Such words, printed in Israeli newspapers, never reach the goyim."

Dr. Roberts cautions against blaming all Jews for crimes of a right-wing government:

"The world will need to remember that although Israel is a Jewish state, it is a state whose policies many Jews find objectionable, just as a majority of American Jews oppose President Bush’s wars of aggression in the Middle East and his unconstitutional policies at home. We must not confuse Israel’s Zionist government with world Jewry, just as we must not confuse the American people with the war criminals in the Bush regime.

"Consider, who do you trust with your civil liberties, the U.S. Department of Justice or the ACLU’s phalanx of Jewish attorneys? [Dr. Roberts according to Who's Who In America is a member of the ACLU, a Jewish organization.]

"We must avoid the mistake that was made by blaming the German people for Adolf Hitler. It was the aristocratic German military that tried to remove Hitler. In contrast, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi blocked the attempt to impeach George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Pelosi is a discredit to California, but shall we blame all of America for Pelosi’s defense of war criminals? How can we do so when U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich courageously read out the articles of impeachment on the House floor?

"Are all Americans guilty because Kucinich did not prevail?" ^[14]

Neoconservatives and the South Ossetia War[link]

In an interview on August 27, 2008, on a broadcast of The Alex Jones Show, Roberts stated that he believed that influential neoconservatives affiliated with the Bush administration were leading the United States into a nuclear confrontation with Russia over the situation in Georgia and South Ossetia. Roberts gave the conflict “almost total certainty if John McCain gets in office" and stated that the conflict would be in a timeframe of about two or three years.^[15]

2009–2010 Iranian election protests[link]

In a June 19–21, 2009 article in CounterPunch about the protests following the re-election of Ahmadinejad, Robert stated that while "the protests ... no doubt have many sincere participants," they "also have the hallmarks of the CIA orchestrated protests in Georgia and Ukraine. It requires total blindness not to see this."^[16]

September 11, 2001 attacks[link]

Of the 9/11 Commission Report he wrote in 2006, "One would think that if the report could stand analysis, there would not be a taboo against calling attention to the inadequacy of its explanations." (see Criticisms of the 9/11 Commission Report). He has reported what he says are findings by experts that conclude there is a large energy deficit in the official account of the collapse of the three WTC buildings, and says that this deficit remains unexplained.

Roberts comments on the "scientific impossibility" of the official explanation for the events on 9/11 and says those engineers and physicists who accept this theory are wrong. On August 18, 2006, he wrote:

I will begin by stating what we know to be a solid incontrovertible scientific fact. We know that it is strictly impossible for any building, much less steel columned buildings, to “pancake” at free fall speed. Therefore, it is a non-controversial fact that the official explanation of the collapse of the WTC buildings is false... Since the damning incontrovertible fact has not been investigated, speculation and “conspiracy theories” have filled the void.^[17]

On the (back) cover of Debunking 9/11 Debunking (2007) he is quoted:

Professor Griffin is the nemesis of the 9/11 cover-up. This new book destroys the credibility of the NIST and Popular Mechanics reports and annihilates his critics.Book Cover Quote

Roberts adding that the so-called neoconservatives intended to use a renewal of the fight against terrorism to rally the American people around the fading Republican Party. "The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists ... are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events," he said. "You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda is not going to do it, it is going to be orchestrated."

When Anwar al-Awlaki, who was linked to some of the hijackers was killed by a drone attack, Roberts objected, calling it "The Day America Died". He wrote that although Awlaki was critical of "indiscriminate assaults on Muslim peoples" and "told Muslims that they did not have to passively accept American aggression", the US lacked evidence that either Awlaki was a real threat or an Al Qaeda operative^[18]

US media[link]

• "Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has achieved a de facto Ministry of Propaganda."^[19]
• "The uniformity of the US media has become much more complete since the days of the cold war. During the 1990s, the US government permitted an unconscionable concentration of print and broadcast media that terminated the independence of the media. Today the US media is owned by 5 giant companies in which pro-Zionist Jews have disproportionate influence. More importantly, the values of the conglomerates reside in the broadcast licenses, which are granted by the government, and the corporations are run by corporate executives—not by journalists—whose eyes are on advertising revenues and the avoidance of controversy that might produce boycotts or upset advertisers and subscribers. Americans who rely on the totally corrupt corporate media have no idea what is happening anywhere on earth, much less at home."^[20]

Society[link]

"If I had time to research my writings over the past 30 years, I could find examples of partisan articles in behalf of Republicans and against Democrats. However, political partisanship is not the corpus of my writings. I had a 16-year stint as Business Week's first outside columnist, despite hostility within the magazine and from the editor's New York social set, because the editor regarded me as the most trenchant critic of the George H.W. Bush administration in the business. The White House felt the same way and lobbied to have me removed from the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies... In their hatred of "the rich," the left-wing overlooks that in the 20th century the rich were the class most persecuted by government. The class genocide of the 20th century is the greatest genocide in history."^[19]

Outsourcing jobs[link]

Roberts has testified before the US–China Commission and written many articles pointing out that the offshoring of high productivity, high value-added jobs in manufacturing and professional services is dismantling the ladders of upward mobility that made the U.S. an opportunity society. Consequently, he is an opponent of Global Labor Arbitrage.

War on Drugs[link]

Though Roberts worked for the Reagan administration, which implemented a "zero tolerance" and "Just Say No" policy on illegal drugs and increased spending to combat drugs, in 2007, he penned an article on the web site VDare.com criticizing the excess of the War on Drugs which he termed the "militarization of local police".^[21]

War on Terror[link]

Roberts asked "Is the War on Terror a Hoax", and claims it has "killed, maimed, dislocated, and made widows and orphans of millions of Muslims in six countries". Roberts called the attacks "naked aggression" on civilian populations and infrastructure which constitute war crimes.]]".^[21]

Republican Party[link]

Roberts is seriously dismayed by what he considers the Republican Party's disregard for the U.S. Constitution. He has even voiced his regret that he ever worked for it, avowing that, had he known what it would become, he would never have contributed to the Reagan Revolution.^[22]

American democracy and oligarchy[link]

Roberts has been increasingly critical of what he deems as the lessening of democracy in the U.S.; instead accusing it of being run by oligarchs by stating:

"The west prides itself that it is the standard for the world, that it is a democracy. But nowhere do you see democratic outcomes: not in Greece, not in Ireland, not in the UK, not here, the outcomes are always to punish the innocent and reward the guilty. And that's what the Greeks are in the streets, protesting. We see this all over the west. There is no democracy, there are oligarchies, some of these smaller European countries are not even run by their own governments, they are run by Wall Street... There is probably more democracy in China than there is in the west. Revolution is the only answer... We are confronted with a curious situation. Throughout the west we think we have democracy, we hold ourselves up high, we demonize China, we talk about the mafia state of Russia, we talk about the Arabs and so on, but where is the democracy here?" ^[23]

Cessation and resumption of journalism[link]

On March 26, 2010, Roberts announced he was "signing off" as a journalist in a column titled "Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It".^[24] However two months later another article by Roberts had appeared in counterpunch.org.^[25]

On March 26, 2010, in a farewell column titled, "Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It,"^[26] Roberts effectively announced his journalistic retirement. The article, published at Counterpunch.org, begins: "There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest." It proceeds to a bitter chronicle of the demise of American intellectual integrity, particularly that of financial journalists and economists. These have been thoroughly corrupted by monetary inducements to misrepresent and ignore what has been, in effect, the systematic dismantling of the nation's productive life, in the name of globalization. He holds the members of his own journalistic profession largely responsible for abetting relentless outsourcing of American industry, thereby gutting the American middle class and effectively dooming the nation's future. He describes his own ostracism from mainstream media access, the consequence of his relentless and unflinching criticism of the demolition process over the past decade. His column ends, "The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off."

Published works[link]

Books[link]

• Alienation and the Soviet Economy (1971, 1990) ISBN 0-8419-1247-5
• Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation, and Crisis (1973, 1983) ISBN 0-03-069791-3
• The Supply Side Revolution: An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington (1984) ISBN 0-674-85620-1
• Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy (1990) ISBN 0-932790-80-1
• The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America (1997) ISBN 0-19-511176-1
• The New Color Line: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy (1995) ISBN 0-89526-423-4
• The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice (2008) ISBN 0-7615-2553-X
• How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds (2009) ISBN 978-1-84935-007-5

Articles[link]

• CounterPunch
• Creators Syndicate
• LewRockwell.com
• Antiwar.com
• VDARE
• World News Daily Information Clearing House

References[link]

1. ^ Roberts, Paul Craig (June 10, 2004). The Real Reagan Record (August 31, 1992). National Review. Retrieved on February 27, 2010.
2. ^ "GUEST LIST". http://www.thepoliticalcesspool.org/guestlist.php. Retrieved November 29, 2009. 
3. ^ www.paulcraigroberts.org
4. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Biography - Paul Craig Roberts
5. ^ ^{a b} The Bulletin, 30 January 1981, "Roberts nominated"
6. ^ Paul Craig Roberts, "Disguising the tax burden: Little-known facts beneath the rhetoric of reform", Harper's, March 1978
7. ^ Bruce Bartlett, Human Events, 28 January 2002, "'Rich' Pay More Than What's Fair.", 58(4), p14
8. ^ Paul Craig Roberts, Washington Times, 17 December 2003, "Two who made a difference"
9. ^ Toledo Blade, 19 January 1982, Treasury Dept. Economist Quits Post: Advocate of Tax-Cut Plan Going To Georgetown U
10. ^ Paul Craig Roberts: Who Will Save America?
11. ^ The Reality Beneath the Flag-Waving
12. ^ Counterpunch
13. ^ Syndicated Columnist Paul Craig Roberts Promotes Anti-Semitism Syndicated Columnist Paul Craig Roberts Promotes Anti-Semitism
14. ^ 09-01- 2009 article
15. ^ Infowars
16. ^ Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated "Color Revolution?" Is This the Culmination of Two Years of Destabilization by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS]
17. ^ Roberts, Paul Craig (2006-08-16). "What we know and don’t know about 9/11". Information Clearing House. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14566.htm. Retrieved 2007-12-06. 
18. ^ "the day america died". lewrockwell (London). October 3, 2011. http://lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts328.html. 
19. ^ ^{a b} Paul Craig Roberts: Who Will Save America?
20. ^ VDARE.com: 08/16/06 - What We Know And Don’t Know About 9/11
21. ^ ^{a b} Paul Craig Roberts, Drug War Has Militarized Your Local Police
22. ^ The mother of all messes
23. ^ Video Interview: Co-Founder Of Reaganomics, Paul Craig Roberts, "There Is Probably More Democracy In China Than There Is In The West" May 2011
24. ^ "Good-Bye: Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It" (counterpunch.org March 24, 2010)
25. ^ Progressives Want "Direct Action" But a Disarmed Public by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS counterpunch.org June 18–20, 2010
26. ^ http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03242010.html | Good-Bye: Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It (March 24, 2010)

External links[link]

• paulcraigroberts
• Column archive (2003-2009) at Antiwar.com
• Column archive (2006-2010) at Creators Syndicate
• Column archive (1995-present) at LewRockwell.com
• Column archive (1995-2009) at Vdare.com
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Works by or about Paul Craig Roberts in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Profile at SourceWatch
• Nomination of Paul Craig Roberts To Be an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, President Ronald Reagan, January 30, 1981

Interviews and articles

• Paul Craig Roberts interviewed on Alex Jones Show regarding active nuclear threat within next 2-3 years
• Paul Craig Roberts interviewed by Webster Tarpley^{[dead link]}
• Roberts' first article calling for Bush's impeachment^{[dead link]}
• Chuck Harder Interviews Paul Craig Roberts
• A Brief Interview with Paul Craig Roberts
• Downloadable audio interview with Scott Horton

Paul Craig may refer to:

• Paul Craig (law professor)
• Paul Craig (soccer)

This disambiguation page lists articles about people with the same name. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

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This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (March 2012)

Craig Roberts (born 25 January 1991) is a Welsh actor. He is best known for playing the lead role of Oliver Tate in the coming-of-age comedy-drama film Submarine, and for playing the character Rio in The Story of Tracy Beaker.

Life and career[link]

Roberts was born in Maesycwmmer, Caerphilly, Wales.

He has appeared as the vampire fanatic Robin Branagh, in two seasons of the television show Young Dracula. He has also appeared in Care and Casualty.

Roberts appeared in the pantomime 'Snow White' in Worthing, where he played the evil queen's sidekick 'Drax' in January 2009. In 2008 he worked with Y Touring Theatre Company where he played the part of 'Ryan' in a UK national tour of 'Full Time' which was a play that explores issues of racism, sexism and homophobia in football. He also appeared in the BBC Three television show Being Human and the online spin-off series Becoming Human as Adam.^[1]

Roberts starred in the 2010 film Submarine^[2] which also stars Paddy Considine and Yasmin Paige.^[3][4]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

1. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y5m86
2. ^ Henry Barnes (2011-03-15). "'I love deadpan': Richard Ayoade and Craig Roberts on Submarine | Film | guardian.co.uk". Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/mar/15/richard-ayoade-craig-roberts-submarine. Retrieved 2012-03-15. 
3. ^ White, James (2009-11-06). "Paddy Considine starring in Submarine". TotalFilm.com. http://www.totalfilm.com/news/paddy-considine-starring-in-submarine. Retrieved 2012-03-15. 
4. ^ "Submarine stars Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige: Q&A". Film4. http://www.film4.com/features/article/submarine-craig-roberts-yasmin-paige-interview. Retrieved 2012-03-15. 

External links[link]

• Craig Roberts at the Internet Movie Database

This article about a television actor or actress is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Elizabeth Warren (born June 22, 1949) is an American bankruptcy law expert, policy advocate, Harvard Law School professor, and Democratic Party candidate in the 2012 United States Senate election in Massachusetts. She has written several academic and popular books concerning the American economy and personal finance. She contributed to the oversight of the 2008 U.S. bailout program, and also led the conception and establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Warren attended The George Washington University and the University of Houston. She received a J.D. from Rutgers School of Law–Newark in 1976. Warren taught law at several universities and was listed by the Association of American Law Schools as a minority law professor throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the wake of the U.S. financial crisis, Warren served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Assets Relief Program in 2008. She later served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under U.S. President Barack Obama.

Early life and education[link]

Elizabeth Herring^[1] was born June 22, 1949,^[2] in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to working class parents Pauline (née Reed) and Donald Jones Herring.^[3][4][5] She was the Herrings' fourth child, with three older brothers.^[6] When Warren was twelve, her father, a janitor, had a heart attack, which led to a pay cut, medical bills, and eventually the loss of their car. Her mother answered phones at Sears and Warren worked as a waitress.^[6][7]

At Northwest Classen High School she was named "Oklahoma's top high-school debater". She received a debate-team scholarship to George Washington University at the age of 16. Initially aspiring to be a teacher, she left GWU after two years to marry her high-school boyfriend Jim Warren.^[6][8] She moved to Houston to be with her husband, who was a NASA engineer. There she enrolled in the University of Houston where she graduated in 1970 with a degree in speech pathology and audiology.^[9] She taught children with disabilities for a year in a public school. However, she had not taken the required education courses to get a teaching certificate (she previously taught under an "emergency certificate"). After taking several graduate education courses, she decided she no longer wanted to pursue education as a career. She and her husband moved to New Jersey and since she was pregnant with their first child, she decided to stay at home for a few years.^[10][11][12]

After making a decision to study law, Warren enrolled at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark,^[10] where she served as an editor of the Rutgers Law Review, and was a summer associate at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft's.^[13] Shortly before her graduation in 1976, she became pregnant with her second child and she worked from home, writing wills and doing real estate closings.^[8][10]

She and Jim had two children before divorcing in 1978: Amelia Warren Tyagi, with whom Elizabeth would later coauthor two books and several articles, and a son, Alexander Warren. Today they have three grandchildren.^[14] In 1980, Warren married Bruce Mann, also a Harvard law professor. She cites Methodist founder John Wesley as an inspiration.^[15]

Academic career[link]

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s she taught law at several universities throughout the country, while researching bankruptcy and middle-class personal finance.^[10] In 1978 Congress had passed a law that made it easier for companies and individuals to declare bankruptcy and Warren decided "to set out to prove they were all a bunch of cheaters... I was going to expose these people who were taking advantage of the rest of us". However, she instead found that the vast majority of those in bankruptcy courts were from hardworking middle-class families: people who had lost their jobs or had family breakups or illnesses that had wiped out their savings. "It changed my vision," she said.^[6]

According to her CV, she taught at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark (1977–78), the University of Houston Law Center (1978–83), the University of Michigan (visiting, 1985), and the University of Texas School of Law (1981–87). She also worked as a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin (1983–87). She joined the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1987, where she became the William A Schnader Professor of Commercial Law in 1990. She joined Harvard Law School in 1992 as the Robert Braucher Visiting Professor of Commercial Law, and began a permanent position as the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law in 1995.^[16]

In 1995 Warren was asked to advise the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. She helped to draft the commission's report and then spent several years opposing legislation meant to severely restrict the right of consumers to file for bankruptcy. Warren and others opposing the legislation were not successful and in 2005 the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was passed by Congress.^[17]

Warren appeared in the documentary film Maxed Out in 2006, has appeared several times on Dr. Phil to talk about money and families, has been a guest on The Daily Show,^[18] is interviewed frequently on cable news networks,^[19] appears in Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, has appeared on the Charlie Rose talk show,^[20] and has appeared on the Real Time With Bill Maher talk show.^[21] She has also appeared on the PBS show NOW.^[22]

Warren in 2010 at a Women in Finance symposium held at the U.S. Treasury.

From November 2006 to November 2010, Warren was a member of the FDIC Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion, which advises the FDIC "on important initiatives focused on expanding access to banking services by underserved populations".^[23] She is a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference, an independent organization which advises the U.S. Congress on bankruptcy law.^[24] She is a former Vice-President of the American Law Institute and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 2005 to 2008, Warren and her law students wrote a blog called Warren Reports, part of Josh Marshall's TPMCafe.

Popular works[link]

In addition to writing more than 100 scholarly articles and six academic books, Warren has written several best-selling books, including All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan, coauthored with her daughter, Amelia Tyagi.

Warren and Tyagi also wrote The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke. Warren and Tyagi point out that a fully employed worker today earns less inflation-adjusted income than a fully employed worker did 30 years ago. To increase their income, families have sent a second parent into the workforce. Although families spend less today on clothing, appliances, and other consumption, the costs of core expenses such as mortgages, health care, transportation, and child care have increased dramatically. The result is that even with two-income earners, families are no longer able to save and have incurred greater and greater debt.

In an article in The New York Times, Jeff Madrick said of Warren's book:

The upshot is that two-income families often have even less income left over today than did an equivalent single-income family 30 years ago, even when they make almost twice as much. And they go deeper in debt. The authors find that it is not the free-spending young or the incapacitated elderly who are declaring bankruptcy so much as families with children... their main thesis is undeniable. Typical families often cannot afford the high-quality education, health care and neighborhoods required to be middle class today. More clearly than anyone else, I think, Ms. Warren and Ms. Tyagi have shown how little attention the nation and our government have paid to the way Americans really live.^[25]

In an article in Time magazine by Maryanna Murray Buechner, "Parent Trap" (subtitled "Want to go bust? Have a kid. Educate same. Why the middle class never had it so bad"), Buechner said of Warren's book:

For families looking for ways to cope, Warren and Tyagi mainly offer palliatives: Buy a cheaper house. Squirrel away a six-month cash cushion. Yeah, right. But they also know that there are no easy solutions. Readers who are already committed to a house and parenthood will find little to mitigate the deflating sense that they have nowhere to go but down.^[26]

In 2005, David Himmelstein and Warren published a study on bankruptcy and medical bills,^[27] which said that half of all families filing for bankruptcy did so in the aftermath of a serious medical problem. The finding was particularly noteworthy because 75 percent of families who fit that description had medical insurance.^[28] This study was widely cited in academic studies and policy debates, though some have challenged the study's methods and offered alternative interpretations of the data.^[29]

TARP oversight[link]

On November 14, 2008, Warren was appointed by United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to chair the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the implementation of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.^[30] The Panel releases monthly oversight reports that evaluate the government bailout and related programs.^[15] The Panel's monthly reports under Warren's leadership covered foreclosure mitigation, consumer and small business lending, commercial real estate, AIG, bank stress tests, the impact of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) on the financial markets, government guarantees, the automotive industry, and many other topics. The Panel has also released special reports on financial regulatory reform and farm loans. For each report, Warren released a video on the Congressional Oversight Panel's website explaining key findings.^[a]

In an interview at Newsweek, Warren commented, "To restore some basic sanity to the financial system, we need two central changes: fix broken consumer-credit markets and end guarantees for the big players that threaten our entire economic system."^[31]

On July 29, 2011, she left her role with the agency to return to academic life at Harvard Law School. Her departing address indicated how she first became involved:

Four years ago, I submitted an article to Democracy Journal that argued for a new government agency called the Financial Product Safety Commission. I threw myself into that piece because I felt strongly that a new consumer agency would make the credit markets work better for American families and strengthen the economic security of the middle class... I leave this agency, but not this fight... the issues we deal with – a middle class that has been squeezed and business models built on tricks and traps – are deeply personal to me, and they always will be.^[32]

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau[link]

Warren has long advocated for the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a watchdog agency designed to "make basic financial practices such as taking out a mortgage or loan more clear and transparent while ferreting out unfair lending practices," according to CNN. In an interview with the Huffington Post, Warren said "My first choice is a strong consumer agency. My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor".^[33] Through Warren's efforts, the bureau was established by the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law by Obama in July 2010. For the first year after the bill's signing, Warren worked on implementation of the bureau as a Special Assistant to the President in anticipation of the agency's formal opening. While liberal groups and consumer advocacy groups pushed for Obama to nominate Warren as the agency's permanent director, Warren was strongly opposed by financial institutions which had criticized Warren as overly aggressive in pursuing regulations, and by the Republican members of Congress. Furthermore, she did not have the strong support of the Obama administration, particularly Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. In July 2011, Obama instead announced the nomination of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray as the bureau's director, subject to Congressional approval.^[34] However, in December his nomination was blocked by a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate. Until a director is confirmed, the agency will not gain the full measure of its powers. It can supervise the compliance of banks with existing laws, but the Dodd-Frank financial legislation dictates that it cannot supervise other financial companies or write new rules. On 4 January 2012, President Obama named Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray the Bureau's Director in a recess appointment.^[35]

2012 US Senate run[link]

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On September 14, 2011, Warren declared that she intended to run for the Democratic nomination for the 2012 election in Massachusetts for the United States Senate seat currently held by incumbent Scott Brown.^[36][37] On September 21, a video of Warren explaining the rationale of her economic policy received attention on the Internet.^[38]

Cherokee self-identification controversy[link]

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Warren listed herself as a minority in the Association of American Law Schools directory of law professors, from 1986 to 1995.^[39] The Brown campaign, the Native American Rights Fund, and a group of more than 150 Cherokees organized by Cherokee genealogist and activist David Cornsilk^[40][41] have questioned her motives for the claim and its propriety.^{[42][43][44][45][46]} The group, “Cherokees Demand Truth from Elizabeth Warren”, plans a protest at the Massachusetts Democratic Convention on June 2, 2012.^[47]

Genealogist Chris Child at the New England Historic Genealogical Society researched Warren's claimed native ancestry but found nothing conclusive. According to Child, “Once you go back further than 150 years the records are more complicated to go through,” and it may take weeks to months to make a determination.^[48][49][50] Warren said that she had heard family stories about her Cherokee ancestors her entire life ^[51] and had hoped it would create opportunities to meet people like her (even though the directory does not specify which minority professors belong to).^[39] But according to Warren, such opportunities never materialized and she eventually "stopped checking it off".^[52]

A month after the controversy began the Boston Globe discovered documents indicating that the Harvard University Law School had reported employing a Native American professor to the U.S. government in the years immediately before and after Warren left Harvard for a stint at the University of Pennsylvania.^[53] The most recent diversity census, for 2011, still shows one Native American professor. The census says that “Race/Ethnicity designations are from self-report data”.^[39] Warren, who does not meet the federal diversity definition of "Native American," admitted providing the information that she was a Native American to University of Pennsylvania and Harvard faculty in conversations after she was hired but denied that "there was [any] reporting for this".^[53] The Washington Post observed that she had "turned what could have been a small problem into a major story" by the way she had handled the issue.^[54]

According to a Suffolk University/7NEWS (WHDH-Boston) poll of 600 likely voters on May 20-22, 2012 there was 72 percent awareness of the controversy. 69 percent said Warren’s Native American heritage listing was not a significant story and 27 percent said it was.^[55][56]

Recognition[link]

Warren at the 2009 100 Most Influential People in the World reception.

Since about 2009, Warren has been recognized by several institutions as a major political figure. In 2009, the Boston Globe named her the Bostonian of the Year,^[9] and the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts honored her with the Lelia J. Robinson Award.^[57] She was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2009 and 2010.^[58] The National Law Journal has repeatedly named Warren as one of the Fifty Most Influential Women Attorneys in America,^[59] and in 2010 they honored her as one of the 40 most influential attorneys of the decade.^[60]

Warren has been recognized for her dynamic teaching style. In 2009, Warren became the first professor in Harvard's history to win the law school's teaching award twice. The Sacks-Freund Teaching Award was voted on by the graduating class in honor of "her teaching ability, openness to student concerns, and contributions to student life at Harvard."^[61] Warren also has won awards from her students at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, and the University of Houston Law Center. She delivered the commencement address at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark in May 2011, where she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree and was conferred membership into the Order of the Coif.^[62]

Publications[link]

Selected articles

• Warren, E. (1987). "Bankruptcy Policy". The University of Chicago Law Review 54 (3): 775–814. JSTOR 1599826. 
• Warren, E. (1992). "The Untenable Case for Repeal of Chapter 11". The Yale Law Journal 102 (2): 437–479. JSTOR 796843. 
• Warren, E. (1993). "Bankruptcy Policymaking in an Imperfect World". Michigan Law Review 92 (2): 336–387. JSTOR 1289668. 
• "Principled Approach to Consumer Bankruptcy". American Bankruptcy Law Journal 71: 483. 1997. http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/ambank71&div=25&id=&page=. 
• "The Bankruptcy Crisis". Indiana Law Journal 73 (4): 1079. Fall 1998. http://www.law.indiana.edu/ilj/volumes/v73/no4/index.shtml. 
• Warren, Elizabeth; Westbrook, Jay Lawrence (January 2000). "Financial Characteristics of Businesses in Bankruptcy". SSRN Electronic Journal 73: 499. DOI:10.2139/ssrn.194750. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=194750. 
• Himmelstein, DU; Warren, E; Thorne, D; Woolhandler, S (2005). "Illness and injury as contributors to bankruptcy". Health affairs (Project Hope) Suppl Web Exclusives: W5–63–W5–73. DOI:10.1377/hlthaff.w5.63. PMID 15689369. 
• "The Vanishing Middle Class". In Edwards, John, ed. (2007). Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream. The New Press. ISBN 978-1-59558-176-1. 
• Himmelstein, David U.; Warren, Elizabeth; Thorne, Deborah; Woolhandler, Steffie J. (2005). "Illness and Injury as Contributors to Bankruptcy". SSRN Electronic Journal. DOI:10.2139/ssrn.664565. 
• Himmelstein, DU; Thorne, D; Warren, E; Woolhandler, S (2009). "Medical bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a national study". The American Journal of Medicine 122 (8): 741–6. DOI:10.1016/j.amjmed.2009.04.012. PMID 19501347. 

Books

• As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America. Oxford University Press. 1989. ISBN 978-0-19-505578-8.  (with Teresa A. Sullivan and Jay Westbrook)
• The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt. Yale University Press. 2001. ISBN 978-0-300-09171-7.  (with Teresa A. Sullivan and Jay Westbrook)
• The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke. Basic Books. 2004. ISBN 978-0-465-09090-7.  (with Amelia Warren Tyagi)
• All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan. Simon and Schuster. 2006. ISBN 978-0-7432-6988-9.  (with Amelia Warren Tyagi)
• Casenote Legal Briefs: Commercial Law. Aspen Publishers. 2006. ISBN 978-0-7355-5827-4.  (with Lynn M. LoPucki, Daniel Keating, Ronald Mann, and Normal Goldenberg)
• The Law of Debtors and Creditors: Text, Cases, and Problems (6th ed.). Aspen Publishers. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7355-7626-1.  (with Jay Westbrook)
• Chapter 11: Reorganizing American Businesses (Essentials). Aspen Publishers. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7355-7654-4. 
• Secured Credit: A Systems Approach. Wolters Kluwer. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7355-7649-0.  (with Lynn M. LoPucki)

See also[link]

Biography portal

• Social class in the United States

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Elizabeth Warren U.S. Senate campaign website
• Elizabeth Warren at Harvard Law School
  • Bibliography
• Biography at WhoRunsGov.com at The Washington Post
• Biography, voting record, and interest group ratings at Project Vote Smart
• Issue positions and quotes at On the Issues
• Campaign finance reports and data at the Federal Election Commission
• Appearances on C-SPAN programs
• Appearances on Charlie Rose
• Appearances at the Internet Movie Database
• Collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Works by or about Elizabeth Warren in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Elizabeth Warren collected news and commentary at Salon.com
• Financial information at OpenSecrets.org

Interviews and articles

• Generation, Gap, and interview with Elizabeth Warrn in Guernica Magazine
• Elizabeth Warren: a tough sheriff in finance's Wild West, The Daily Telegraph
• Warren Winning Means You Won't Sell It If You Can't Explain It, Bloomberg
• In fight over credit rules, she wields a plan, Boston Globe
• "The TARP Queen: Why we should all bow before Elizabeth Warren (even if you've never heard of her)". Slate. Archived from the original on April 27, 2009. http://web.archive.org/web/20090427081845/http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/judgments/2009/04/23/elizabeth-warren-my-hero. 
• Bank Buster, Mother Jones
• The Debt Crusader: Inspired by Dr. Phil, Harvard's Elizabeth Warren has gone to D.C. to change the way America borrows, Newsweek
• Elizabeth Warren on the Economy, NOW on PBS
• Video: Elizabeth Warren, New Yorker, Nov. 16, 2009
• Interview with Yahoo! Finance, Oct. 16, 2009
• Voices of Power Video: Elizabeth Warren, Washington Post, Oct. 8, 2009
• Interview with Elizabeth Warren from Frontline
• Elizabeth Warren on NPR link to full interview for show of May 8, 2009
• UCTV programs with Elizabeth Warren
  • The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class: Higher Risks, Lower Rewards, and a Shrinking Safety Net
  • Conversations with History: Law, Politics, and the Coming Collapse of the Middle Class with Elizabeth Warren
• Warren says Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is Obama's "Strongest Financial Reform" – video report by Democracy Now!