Money Manager Thinks "High-Decibel" Elizabeth Warren Doesn't Know Her Place

By David Dayen, The Intercept

30 October 16

igh-decibel” Sen. Elizabeth Warren doesn’t know her place, according to a Friday New York Times op-ed.

Roger Lowenstein, the journalist-turned-chairman of the Sequoia mutual fund, criticizes Warren, “the nation’s unelected regulatory czar,” for being too outspoken about the financial industry. At one point, Lowenstein condemns her for “painting bankers with as broad a brush as Donald J. Trump uses to demean Muslims.”

For the record, Warren has not called for all bankers to be barred from entry into the United States “until we figure out what’s going on.”

Lowenstein first disparages Warren for calling for the termination of Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White for “failing to have the SEC draft rules requiring corporations to disclose details of their political spending.”

While it is terribly uppity of a senator to have a perspective on a public policy issue, the corporate political spending rule is only one of Warren’s criticisms of White.

The letter she wrote to President Obama urging White’s firing is 12 pages long, only three of which discuss the political spending rule. Warren spends much more time in the letter on White’s desire to have public companies reduce disclosure to investors (a key priority of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) and the SEC’s refusal to finalize 19 Congressionally mandated rules under the Dodd-Frank Act, from regulations on disclosure of conflict minerals to enhancing reporting of borrowing of securities.

Lowenstein calls Warren’s position on the SEC “turf encroachment,” adding that, “Last I checked, the SEC was a regulatory agency of the executive branch, in which Ms. Warren is not, in fact, employed.”

Last I checked, the SEC is an independent regulatory agency accountable to Congress, established by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Congressional oversight of the SEC happens at the committee level, for example by the Senate Banking Committee, of which Warren is a member.

Lowenstein also demeans Warren for opposing the appointment of investment banker Antonio Weiss to the No. 3 position in the Treasury Department. The author notes that, after Weiss withdrew from the appointment and was made an adviser to Treasury, he “brokered a highly praised law to restructure Puerto Rico’s debt,” proving that Warren is a dunderhead who doesn’t understand anything about regulation.

That law has been met with vociferous protest in Puerto Rico because it installed an unelected control board to usurp the island’s sovereign government and force continued austerity on its impoverished citizens. In the rarefied circles where Lowenstein mingles, this is seen as responsible and praiseworthy.

Finally, Lowenstein fumes that the SEC shouldn’t have to develop a political spending rule at all, because it distracts from the agency’s core mission. Instead, the SEC should think about “retail investors flocking to index funds” and whether they understand the risks of doing so.

As noted, Lowenstein is the director of a mutual fund, which stands to lose significant market share if investors leave for index funds. So his hit job on Elizabeth Warren has the dual purpose of lobbying a regulatory agency to protect his business.

Speaking of that mutual fund, Lowenstein should perhaps not be so confident that he is more knowledgeable than Warren about the ways of finance. Until this July, the Sequoia Fund was the second-largest investor in pharmaceutical firm Valeant, which is under SEC investigation for dubious accounting practices and a hidden relationship with a mail-order pharmacy. The fund lost 13 percent of its value in the first half of 2016.

Perhaps Sequoia’s investors would have been better served by a more active securities regulator.

Police Clash With Pipeline Protesters

By Ann Wright, Consortium News

30 October 16

The confluence of the twin issues of Native American respect for the land and modern environmentalists’ alarm over global warming has met in resistance to a North Dakota oil pipeline, observed Ann Wright.

t’s like we are back to the 1800s when the U.S. Army rampaged against Native American tribes across the American West. The militarized police and the use of the National Guard this week in responding to the Standing Rock Sioux Native American challenge in North Dakota to big oil and its dangerous pipelines reminds one of Custer’s Last Stand against Sitting Bull.

In fact, the portrait of Sitting Bull is on one of the most popular t-shirts available to supporters of the “water protectors,” as those are known who protest yet one more oil pipeline that crosses sensitive watershed areas and major rivers of the United States.

Four days last week, I joined hundreds of Native Americans and social justice campaigners from around the United States and around the world, in challenging the Dakota Access Pipe Line (DAPL), the 1,172-mile, $3.7 billion dollar scar across the face of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.

Last week, I photographed the area along Highway 6 south of Bismarck where the Energy Transfer Partnership contractors were busy digging the trench for the “Black Snake” as the pipeline is called.

I also counted 24 police cars returning to Bismarck at shift change around 3 p.m., a huge number of state law enforcement personnel and vehicles dedicated to protection of corporate business, instead of the rights of citizens.

Huge machines were chewing up the earth near water sources for all of North Dakota. The pipeline was rerouted from near Bismarck so if the pipeline breaks it would not endanger the water supply of the capital city of the state. But it was relocated to where it will cross the Missouri River and will jeopardize the water supply of the Native Americans and all Americans living in southern North Dakota and downstream of the Missouri River.

On Thursday, the digging took a more confrontational turn. The huge digging equipment arrived to cut across State Highway 1806 at a spot where water protectors had set up a front-line camp several months ago, one mile north of the main encampment of over 1,000 people.  As the equipment arrived, the “water protectors” blocked the highway.

In a dangerous incident, an armed private security guard of DAPL came onto the camp and was chased off into the water abutting the camp by water protectors. After a lengthy standoff, tribal agency police arrived and arrested the security guard. Water protectors set his security vehicle on fire.

On Friday more than 100 local and state police and North Dakota National Guard arrested over 140 people who blocked the highway attempting to stop the destruction of the land. Police in riot gear with automatic rifles lined up across a highway, with multiple MRAPs (mine-resistant ambush protected military vehicles), a sound cannon that can immobilize persons nearby, Humvees driven by National Guardsmen, an armored police truck and a bulldozer.

Police used mace, pepper spray, tear gas and flash-bang grenades and bean-bag rounds against Native Americans who lined up on the highway.   Police reportedly shot rubber bullets at their horses and wounded one rider and his horse.

As this police mayhem was unfolding, a small herd of buffalo stampeded across a nearby field, a strong symbolic signal to the water protectors who erupted in cheers and shouts, leaving law enforcement officials wondering what was happening.

The legality of the use by the State of North Dakota of its National Guard for the protests has been questioned strongly. National Guardsmen have been operating checkpoints to control entrance into the area and later were reportedly used to go house to house to talk to citizens about the protests — clearly law enforcement functions, not responsibilities of a military organization.

Supporters of the water protectors come from all over the United States. One grandmother arrived with cooking equipment and food, purchased with her social security check. Her granddaughter who helps her keep track of her finances, called her and said, “Granny, you have only $9 left in your bank account.” She responded, “Yes, and I going to use it today to buy more food to cook for these good people who are trying to save our water and our culture.”

Ann Wright served 29 years in the US Army/Army Reserve and retired as a Colonel. She also was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years.  She resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war.