The day may come when the worst nightmare a crooked banker or compromised regulator can have begins with the words, "You have a letter from Senator Warren."

But before we get to that, here's an experience that may seem familiar: You're at a party or family get-together - a Sunday barbecue, perhaps - and someone says something like, "We need less government regulation." Next thing you know you're having an argument.Here's some advice for the next social event: There's no need to get into an argument. You can just ask, "How do you figure?"

With every unreasonable assertion you can ask a reality-based question like, "Where's the study that says that?" Once in a while they may cite a shallow white paper from sine right-wing foundation, but more often than that they won't even get that far. Soon the conversation will peter out with a "Well, uh ..."We can never go wrong asking questions. We only go wrong when we don't ask questions.

That's what makes this letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren so important. For five years we've watched the Justice Department ignore overwhelming evidence of bank crime, on grounds that Attorney General Eric Holder made explicit only last March when he said that "the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute... it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy."

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which has responsibility for pursuing civil bank fraud, has taken the same approach. So has the Federal Reserve, which has regulatory responsibility for the banking industry. They've all been saying pretty much the same thing: That criminal prosecution would destabilize the financial sector and put the world's economy at risk.

With this letter, Sen. Warren is asking these agencies a very simple question: "How do you figure?"

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It's so nice to hear a high-profile senator asking the same question that's been on the minds of voters for some time now. Fortunately, Sen. Warren is popular enough that the bankers are a tad afraid of her:

In a letter (PDF) sent to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Attorney General Eric Holder and SEC Chair Mary Jo White on Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) demanded to know why the government keeps accepting financial settlements from criminal bankers when they could instead be taken to trial, convicted and locked up.

In six short paragraphs, Warren requested that each institution turn over copies of any internal research “on the trade-offs to the public” between letting big financial firms pay a fine and walk “without admission of guilt” versus moving forward with full-scale prosecutions.

The letter was sent as a follow-up to a similar question she asked of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on Feb. 14. Warren noted that the OCC replied last week denying the existence of any such research. In her letter sent Tuesday, she went on to add:

…I believe very strongly that if a regulator reveals itself to be unwilling to take large financial institutions all the way to trial — either because it is too timid or because it lacks resources — the regulator has a lot less leverage in settlement negotiations and will be forced to settle on terms that are much more favorable to the wrongdoer.

The consequence can be insufficient compensation to those who are harmed by illegal activity and inadequate deterrence of future violations. If large financial institutions can break the law and accumulate millions in profits and, if they get caught, settle by paying out of those profits, they do not have much incentive to follow the law.

There’s been a rash of mega-settlements between the government and the nation’s largest banks in recent years over allegations of foreclosing on people without just cause, knowingly making bad loans and reselling the debt, making false statements to rob from retired pensioners, laundering money for drug cartels, repressive regimes and terrorists, and agreeing to settlements and then ignoring them, to name a few.

“The problem is the banks have overwhelming confidence that law enforcement is not taking this seriously,” New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said last Monday, appearing on MSNBC.

“They have overwhelming confidence that whatever the rules are, they won’t be followed up on.”

Watch as the perfectly reasonable Sen. Elizabeth Warren backs these government hacks into a corner over protecting crooked banks from consequences of their illegal actions. How naive -- she actually believes regulators are supposed to work for the people!

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) embarrassed government regulators during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Thursday morning as she demanded to know why they won’t reveal how frequently big banks illegally foreclosed on homeowners. In January, regulators abandoned a case-by-case review of foreclosure fraud conducted by some of the nation’s largest banks in favor of a $9.3 billion settlement. Under the deal, most of the 4.4 million homeowners who were foreclosed on in 2009 or 2010 received less than $1,000 each.

Fair housing advocates and Democratic lawmakers panned the agreement, claiming that it short-circuited a more detailed review process (known as Independent Foreclosure Review) and let banks off the hook for illegally foreclosing on millions of homeowners. Regulators had initially claimed banks broke the law or made errors in 6.5 percent of all the loans reviewed, though the number has since been revised upward.

During the hearing, Warren pressed officials from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve for answers about how frequently banks broke the law, only to discover that regulators didn’t know the exact number before reaching their settlement and were now unwilling to publicize the error rate.

“You’re saying that the [you] did not have an estimate in mind of how many banks had broken the law and how many home owners were the victims of illegal activities?” Warren asked in disbelief. She pressed for public disclosure, but was told that the information about banks’ illegal activities is proprietary and may not ever be released:

WARREN: So you have made a decision to protect the banks but not a decision tell the families who have been illegally foreclosed against?

RICHARD ASHTON (FEDERAL RESERVE): We haven’t made a decision about what information we would provide to individuals. [...]

WARREN: So I just want to make sure I get this straight. Families get pennies on the dollar in the settlement for having been the victims of illegal activities or mistakes in the banks’ activities. You now know individual cases where the banks violated the law and you’re not going to tell the homeowners or at least it’s not clear if you’re going to do that?

Gee, it all sounds so sleazy when she says it like that! Huffington Post reports that Sen. Sherrod Brown also kicked some ass in these hearings, so let's give him props, too.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings sent a letter to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Comptroller Thomas Curry, challenging a decision by agency staff not to supply documents related to violations of federal and state law by mortgage servicing companies. This is why we wanted her, and by gum, it's good to have her!

At a meeting yesterday, Warren, Cummings, and Rep. Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, were informed by staff from the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) that they would not produce any documents relating to specific mortgage servicers involving illegal foreclosures, inflated fees, or fraudulent court documents. Staff from the agencies claimed these documents are the “trade secrets” of mortgage servicing companies and should be withheld from Members of Congress because producing them could be interpreted as a waiver of their authority to withhold proprietary business information from the public.

“We strongly believe that documents should not be withheld from any Member of Congress based on the flawed argument that illegal activity by banks is somehow their proprietary business information. Breaking the law is not a corporate trade secret,” wrote the Members. “As regulators, you identified systemic and widespread abuses two years ago, and concealing important information about these violations limits our ability to fulfill our responsibility to conduct oversight over the actions of mortgage servicing companies and to develop legislation to protect our constituents from further abuse.”

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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.

You can see why the elite hate her -- and why we don't:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren unloaded on bank regulators Thursday about the fact that British bank HSBC is still doing business in the U.S., with no criminal charges filed against it, despite confessing to what one regulator called "egregious" money laundering violations.

Her comments came just a day after the attorney general of the United States confessed that some banks are so big and important that they are essentially above the law. His Justice Department's failure to bring any criminal charges against HSBC or its employees is Exhibit A of that problem.

During a Senate Banking Committee hearing about money laundering, Warren (D-Mass.) grilled officials from the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency about why HSBC, which recently paid $1.9 billion to settle money laundering charges, wasn't criminally prosecuted and shut down in the U.S. Nor were any individuals from HSBC charged with any crimes, despite the bank confessing to laundering billions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels and rogue regimes like Iran and Libya over several years.

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What no one explains is that this "shut up and sit down" Senate model is based on the not-unreasonable idea that new senators should develop some expertise in their area before they start making waves. But since Warren is one of the nation's leading experts on banking and financial services, it's absolutely silly to expect she wouldn't use her expertise from Day One. And, as Sirota points out, it's a double standard for progressives. Anyone telling Marco Rubio not to make waves? Via Raw Story:

Appearing with “The Young Turks” host Cenk Uygur on Tuesday, author David Sirota critiqued Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) recent grilling of the nation’s top financial regulators, saying it’s the first evidence we’ve seen that Warren is showing no interest in “the Hillary Clinton model” of sitting down and shutting in hopes of earning the right to be taken seriously.

“What’s un-serious is the notion that a senator shouldn’t ask serious questions about the biggest financial meltdown in contemporary history,” he said.

“When it comes to Democratic senators, what you hear is, ‘Please follow the Hillary Clinton model,’ that’s what it’s basically called,” Sirota said. “Hillary Clinton came in and she had star power and she laid low and didn’t do very much. Same thing for Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate. The expectation, if not the mandate for liberal senators is, only can you be taken seriously if you follow this model that says essentially, sit down and shut up.”

Poor, poor, powerless little Wall Street is having itself a tantrum today over mean old Lizzie Warren, who took her (rhetorical) ax and gave the banker boys 40 whacks:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) meeting with bank regulators Thursday left bankers reeling, after the politician questioned why regulators had not prosecuted a bank since the financial crisis.

At one point, Warren asked why big banks' book value was lower, when most corporations trade above book value, saying there could be only two reasons for it.

"One would be because nobody believes that the banks' books are honest. Second, would be that nobody believes that the banks are really manageable. That is, if they are too complex either for their own institutions to manage them or for the regulators to manage them," she said.

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