By Zach Carter
The New York Times should be embarrassed. This morning, the paper of record published an
outrageous hit-piece on Raj Date, one of the most effective consumer advocates in the nation. The article completely misconstrues Date's work on financial reform, ignores his years of work pushing for stronger consumer protection, and falsely portrays Date as some kind of nefarious subprime hooligan. When Elizabeth Warren hired Date as an adviser for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it was the best possible hire she could have made, and activists continue to celebrate the decision with good reason.
The Times owes both Date and the public an apology for this egregious smear.
As the Wall Street overhaul moved through Congress, Date was one of the strongest voices for serious reform. He conducted powerful research demonstrating the need for new safeguards in everything from auto loans to proprietary trading, and advised members of Americans for Financial Reform (disclosure: I joined AFR's steering committee in August of this year) on just about everything that mattered during the legislative debate.
Date did all of this work for free through the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy, a pro-reform think-tank that he founded. In fact, Date himself
funded many of Cambridge Winter's operations. The think-tank took on
everything, and was universally critical of the Wall Street establishment and regulatory infrastructure that had driven the economy off a cliff. Even better, it proposed concrete solutions to complex problems, and provided detailed, technical financial research to back it all up.
The Times story doesn't even bother to
link to the Cambridge Winter site, so I'll do them several better.
Here's an article Date wrote criticizing excessive Wall Street pay.
Here's a report he wrote (.pdf) about how to regulate the shadow banking system (note that the report was co-written by
Mike Konczal, a major reform advocate and widely respected economics blogger).
Here's a report (.pdf) Date penned slamming abusive auto lending.
And here's Date's June 2009 essay praising the proposal to create the CFPB, at a time when such praise was profoundly unpopular on Wall Street. I could go on forever. They're all available for free on the site. A reporter for
The New York Times ought to be able to figure out how to do this stuff.
<…>
The Times story is really horrible. It doesn't just smear Date, it mischaracterizes Elizabeth Warren's work on behalf of consumers as work for the financial industry. Check out this laughable paragraph:
Mr. Date is not the only official at the new agency whose background in the financial industry has attracted attention. Ms. Warren, an assistant to the president and a special adviser to the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, disclosed in government filings that she earned more than $100,000 over the last two years for consulting work on bankruptcy law and for providing expert-witness research in a class-action lawsuit involving the credit card businesses of major United States banks.
This is inexcusably sloppy. Warren was a consultant for consumer groups! The class-action lawsuit Wyatt references was a lawsuit filed on
behalf of consumers against credit card companies!
more Imagine if the NYT explored the dealings and background of Rove, the Koch brothers, Scalia, Thomas and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as indepthly as they did with the Date and Warren.
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