Who's afraid of Elizabeth Warren?

AMERICA WENT on a dizzying shopping spree following World War II, buying cars and houses, and filling those houses with toasters, ovens, furniture and a staggering array of stuff. This orgy of spending was the birth of a nation of consumers.

In 1972, the Consumer Products Safety Commission was created to regulate the safety of those products. We probably have Ralph Nader to thank for the creation of the CPSC. In 1965, he wrote "Unsafe at any Speed," a book detailing the little regard many car manufacturers had for the safety of their products. This work not only shifted the onus of safety from drivers to car manufacturers, but laid the groundwork for an era of consumer activism, leading to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and other agencies like the CPSC.

As we look back at that time, what's remarkable is not what Nader became - a presidential spoiler - but how short the era of consumer activism lasted. In the 40 years since "Unsafe," few if any individuals have had as much power to effectively stand on the side of consumers.

Now we have Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor who chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel on Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Three years ago, she published "Unsafe at Any Rate," a blistering and eloquent argument for the creation of a Financial Product Safety Commission. As the paper points out (find it at www.democracyjournal.org), "Consumers can enter the market to buy physical products confident they won't be tricked into buying exploding toasters and other unreasonably dangerous products. . . . Consumers entering the market to buy financial products should enjoy the same protection."

Warren references exploding toasters often in the paper, likening them to the predatory mortgages and the complicated financial instruments that exploded in our faces in 2008, rocked the economy and led to the current recession.

Warren is one of the leading candidates for a new consumer agency just created with the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. But despite her qualifications - and despite (or because of) the fact that she literally wrote the founding document for consumer financial regulation - her confirmation is far from a sure bet.

Why? Because the banks are afraid. They fear she will be too tough and have a detrimental effect on the growth of financial products. (Keep in mind that our appetite for and spending on stuff has remained insatiable since the Consumer Products Safety Commission began.)

Naturally, anyone with reasonable intelligence would assume that Warren's unpopularity with banks makes her the best candidate for the job.

But those intelligent people don't get big campaign contributions from banks and financial companies. Those intelligent people don't make billions of dollars on credit-card fees, interest rates, predatory loans, subprime mortgages, and the other products in a consumer financial services industry that has grown to a $3 trillion-a-year business. That business has become an unregulated bazaar of products with little oversight and ruinous impact on many lives.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate banking committee, has questioned whether Warren could garner enough confirmation votes. Some suggest that the Obama administration could bypass an immediate confirmation hearing and appoint her as interim chair, allowing her to create and build the agency.

As we continue to struggle with the casualties of the financial meltdown - from the homeless to the jobless - Warren's appointment could - and should - be the move that turns the tide in a way no other remedy has yet.