Women take on Wall Street

[Derechos]

Ascent of a Woman

By TIMOTHY EGAN

NYT

snip

Having mastered a technical and demanding route up the central spire of the Teton range, Cantwell is back at sea level taking on a more elusive target — Wall Street. She has been after the lords of big finance for almost a decade, and is furious now that reforms intended to rein in the kind of car-bomb speculation that brought down the global economy have been seriously diluted. Wall Street has not changed its ways.

“People are really frustrated,” she said. “Where are the regulators? Why aren’t the banks lending? Where’s the money for small business? Why do we only bail out the people with power?”

If populism, directed at the manipulators of paper wealth and the politicians in their pockets, is a path to electoral victory next fall then the Democrats could do no better than to look at Cantwell on this coast, and Elizabeth Warren on the other. Two women, long-belittled by the suits, have been laser-focused on corporate excess since well before protesters decided to occupy Wall Street. And in the process, they’ve angered many of their own party members, whose hands are soiled by “the largest lobbying force ever assembled on the face of the earth,” as Warren characterized it.

How large? At least 2,500 lobbyists from the financial industry swarmed over Washington from 2009 to early last year, spending $1.3 billion to fight reform — more than $2 million in persuading power for every member of Congress.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/ascent-of-a-woman/?ref=opinion

[BlueDemKev]

1. Uh-oh....

I'm not sexist, but I think Wal-Street may meet its match this time! ;-)