You know that feeling you get when you watch Elizabeth Warren take apart the bad guys, the ones who have crashed the economy, cheaped out on our wages and just made our lives all-around miserable? It's like that childhood nightmare when you're cornered by the Mean Girls, but miracle of miracles, your big sister shows up -- just in time to kick ass and take names.

Yeah, me too!

A wonderful profile on Senator Warren is the cover story in what is, unfortunately, the last issue of the Boston Phoenix:

In fact, it is the kind of behavior that would get a lot of new lawmakers smacked down hard, or marginalized into ineffectiveness. Few new Senators behave this way — other than the occasional bomb-thrower more interested in headlines than results. (Ted Cruz of Texas currently fits this category.)

But Warren has an independence and authority that frees her to be outspoken without getting alienated. She can embarrass the Barack Obama administration for failing to send bankers to jail without fear.

She can also react with righteous outrage when I asked about Obama's recent support of "chained Consumer Price Index (CPI)," which liberals view as a cut to Social Security benefits. When I suggest that most brand-new senators would not undercut their own party's president that way, she responds: "Better I should say this now, than wait to have anybody surprised about it later on."

There's a reason for her confidence: not only does Warren have tremendous credibility on the issues, she is simply too popular, with too broad and devoted a following, for anyone to threaten — up to and including the Obama administration.

She is not a career politician, entangled by the favors and deals traded on her way up the ladder. Some $25 million of the $41 million raised for her campaign came not PACs or big-dollar donors, but from individuals giving less than $200 each — an almost unprecedented national grassroots following, who stand ready to move as one to help Warren and her allies, and to oppose those seen as obstacles.

That gives an extraordinary amount of independent power to a woman who isn't the least bit shy about wielding it.

She is, in her own way, too big to fail.

But as we know, there's no easier way to become a target of the Democratic establishment, the librul media and the right-wing attack machine than to act like a real progressive:

"Behind the scenes she is being herself," Franken says. "She has strong progressive views. But, in her interactions she's a lovely, nice person."

She also has the advantage of being able to work on a six-year time horizon — and, realistically, as long as she wants to stay there.

And that might be what scares her Wall Street enemies the most. There is no amount of money, or scurrilous attacks, likely to cause her downfall at the polls.

That will only make them more eager to find other ways to halt her efforts. They will counter-attack at every opportunity — as with the current attempt to derail Cordray's re-nomination — and undoubtedly plan longer-term strategies to limit her sway.

After all, they are supposed to be too big to fail, not her. It will take much longer than three months to see which of them will ultimately left standing.

So here's the thing: The more effective she becomes, the worse the attacks will be. We all know this. So it's really, really important that we have her back. Any time they go after her, we need to unleash the hounds of hell. And when we get those emails from Warren's PAC asking for contributions, we need to give her a few bucks, whenever we can spare it.

Because we have a national treasure in Sen. Warren, the People's Lobbyist.

I finally opened an account at my local credit union a few weeks ago, and the manager told me their membership was up by "at least" 25 percent this quarter. Which is good! They treated me like a human being, they had a nice waiting area and enough tellers that there weren't huge lines. It seemed, well, almost un-American! In a press release from American Banker, here's news that the "move your money" movement has been a real success:

WASHINGTON — An estimated 650,000 consumers have closed their bank accounts and opted for credit union membership over the past four weeks, according to CUNA, bringing the approach to Saturday’s Bank Transfer Day to a crescendo.

In a survey of 5,000 of its credit union members CUNA estimates that at least 650,000 consumers across the nation have joined credit unions since Sept. 29, the day Bank of America unveiled its now-rescinded $5 monthly debit card fee. Also during that time, CUNA estimates that credit unions have added $4.5 billion in new savings accounts, likely from the new members and existing members shifting their funds.

"These results indicate that consumers are clearly making a smarter choice by moving to credit unions where, on average, they will save about $70 a year in fewer or no fees, lower rates on loans and higher return on savings." said CUNA President Bill Cheney.

Cheney said the growth is particularly noticeable at larger credit unions (those with $100 million or more in assets, which account for about 20% of all credit unions – but count about 80% of all credit union members).

The CUNA survey shows that more than 70% of these credit unions reported they have seen growth in memberships and deposits since Sept. 29.

In an interview, in response to a question about recent protest marches in the UK, retired Manchester United soccer star Eric Cantona said he didn't think protests were very effective:

"We don't pick up weapons to kill people to start the revolution. The revolution is really easy to do these days. What's the system? The system is built on the power of the banks. So it must be destroyed through the banks.

"This means that the three million people with their placards on the streets, they go to the bank and they withdraw their money and the banks collapse. Three million, 10 million people, and the banks collapse and there is no real threat. A real revolution.

"We must go to the bank. In this case there would be a real revolution. It's not complicated; instead of going on the streets and driving kilometres by car you simply go to the bank in your country and withdraw your money, and if there are a lot of people withdrawing their money the system collapses. No weapons, no blood, or anything like that."

He concludes: "It's not complicated and in this case they will listen to us in a different way. Trade unions? Sometimes we should propose ideas to them."

Cantona's call appeared to touch a popular chord and generated an instant response. Nearly 40,000 people have clicked on the YouTube clip, and a French-based movement – StopBanque – has taken up the campaign for a massive coordinated withdrawal of money from banks on 7 December. It is claimed that more than 14,000 people are already committed to removing deposits. The movement is also gaining increasing attention in Britain.

The trio of French Facebook users now leading the campaign have appealed to people across Europe to provoke a bank crash. "It is we who control the banks, not vice versa," they write.

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The New Yorker features a thought-provoking article called "What Good is Wall Street?" Reading it made me think of this song from Mary Poppins, "Fidelity Fiduciary Bank." Amazing, how timely this song is!

The acid test for me will be: What does Elizabeth Warren think? It's probably a good idea because the story quotes a "senior administration" as expressing "concern" about reducing the Fed’s powers any further and said it was "really critical" that the Fed maintain direct supervision of the large financial firms.

Which could be Rahm, Summers or Geithner, and if they told me the sky was blue, I'd have to double check:

WASHINGTON — The Senate and the Obama administration are nearing agreement on forming a council of regulators, led by the Treasury secretary, to identify systemic risk to the nation’s financial system, officials said Wednesday.

The issue is one of the most fundamental in the contentious effort to overhaul regulation after the financial crisis, and addresses one of the primary lessons of the near debacle: that no one had been assigned to ensure the stability of the system as a whole and detect the kinds of excessive risk-taking and imbalances that could rock an entire economy.

Assigning the Treasury Department the job of spotting incipient trouble and addressing it quickly has support among senators from both parties, though several important provisions, including whether the council would have the ability to bypass existing banking regulators and impose its own rules on huge financial firms, remain to be worked out.

The effect would be to diminish the authority of the Federal Reserve, whose regulation of banks has been criticized for failing to head off the problems.

Talk about understatment. Considering that the boys at the Fed were in on the con game, you can see why Rahm, Larry and Timmy might be concerned about them losing control. Matt Taibbi:

Con artists have a word for the inability of their victims to accept that they've been scammed. They call it the "True Believer Syndrome." That's sort of where we are, in a state of nagging disbelief about the real problem on Wall Street. It isn't so much that we have inadequate rules or incompetent regulators, although both of these things are certainly true. The real problem is that it doesn't matter what regulations are in place if the people running the economy are rip-off artists. The system assumes a certain minimum level of ethical behavior and civic instinct over and above what is spelled out by the regulations. If those ethics are absent — well, this thing isn't going to work, no matter what we do. Sure, mugging old ladies is against the law, but it's also easy. To prevent it, we depend, for the most part, not on cops but on people making the conscious decision not to do it.

That's why the biggest gift the bankers got in the bailout was not fiscal but psychological. "The most valuable part of the bailout," says Rep. Sherman, "was the implicit guarantee that they're Too Big to Fail." Instead of liquidating and prosecuting the insolvent institutions that took us all down with them in a giant Ponzi scheme, we have showered them with money and guarantees and all sorts of other enabling gestures. And what should really freak everyone out is the fact that Wall Street immediately started skimming off its own rescue money. If the bailouts validated anew the crooked psychology of the bubble, the recent profit and bonus numbers show that the same psychology is back, thriving, and looking for new disasters to create. "It's evidence," says Rep. Kanjorski, "that they still don't get it."

More to the point, the fact that we haven't done much of anything to change the rules and behavior of Wall Street shows that we still don't get it. Instituting a bailout policy that stressed recapitalizing bad banks was like the addict coming back to the con man to get his lost money back. Ask yourself how well that ever works out. And then get ready for the reload.

The Big Picture: Want to know why financial reform has been dead in the water so far? "The banks run the place."

Southern Beale: No wonder Republicans didn’t bother to fix healthcare all those years they were in power. There’s too much money to be made by keeping it broken.

Truthdig: The chief justice of the California Supreme Court has a choice word for the state’s method of operation: dysfunctional

PERRspectives: The Nobel Prizes for Conservatives

Fafblog!: Our Threatiest Threat

HOLY CRAP: Clueless Christian...Biblical figures return to cleanse Conservapedia...Christian baseball?...Bill Tyndale's Bible...Jesus is their Health Care...Pray for me...Murder is caused by legalized abortion?...The First Question...Mr. Deity...Your friend & brother in Christ...Polygamous Marriages endorsed

The Bobblespeak Translations: What Obama really said yesterday on Meet the Press. Later in that hour, David Gregory actually did his job...for once

Prairie Weather: The most important health-care document released this week was not Sen. Max Baucus's Healthy Future Act. It was the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2009 Employer Benefits Survey.

Calculated Risk: Senator Dodd pushing new bank regulatory plan

skippy the bush kangaroo: Environmental news

The Washington Note: Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might be Obama's Khrushchev

Rising Hegemon: Conservatives and Porn

James Fallows: On strategy and tactics

Cutting Through The Crap: Calmness under fire, careful deliberation...since when?

The Osterley Times: John McCain is campaigning on change whilst telling us that change is dangerous

The Moderate Voice: The liberal Palin pity party, lies, and self esteem

The Peking Duck: What could be more unnerving than having your largest creditor begin pondering your financial demise?

It's fiscal meltdown time at The Opinion Mill's Weekend Bookchat! Learn about the con-man who caused the first banking collapse in America, and read about the book that all but prophesied the current collapse. There's a new creationist pseudo-textbook out, and we've got the reviews! Here's a story about the new India that Thomas Friedman would rather not read! All this and more!

Dodd, Frank and others on CNN, MSNBC and FOX... Frank said there really was no reason to go to the White House, but he's glad to stop by. Obama and McCain will meet with Bush at the White House. McCain is making a play to try and say he forced this I guess...It's not like he's done anything on this subject...

The Hill:

Republican presidential nominee John McCain has not introduced any banking or housing bills in the 110th Congress, while Democratic rival Barack Obama has proposed five.

Both candidates are traveling to Washington on Thursday to meet with President Bush and congressional leaders to build support for a massive rescue plan for the nation's ailing economy.

Open Left: A letter, purportedly from an angry Democrat. I'd like to believe that. Does anybody like this deal? Obama doesn't. Call your Senators and Congressional Representative right now.

Beltway Blips: McCain chief of staff/lobbyist was paid $2 million by Fannie and Freddie for access to McCain and to stop regulation of the banking industry

Informed Comment: Baghdad Mayor: US tanks run amok, and there will never be a street named for Bush in Baghdad

Sadly, No!: Shorter Entire Right-Wing Blogosphere

Scott Horton: Justice in the age of Bush

Pancake City: In the wake of an epic financial meltdown that threatens to derail the U.S. economy for years, Barack Obama announced he was ending his run for President of the United States, declaring to a stunned nation, "Man, this is bullshit." (h/t getalife)

Earl Palmer: One of the most recorded, and highly respected drummers in the history of popular American music has passed away. I had the great privilege of touring and recording extensively with this giant, and he was a good friend for over 30 years. He will be greatly missed.