Warren Had Secret Ties to Bank Lobbyist

The sworn enemy of big banks cut a secret deal with small banks to fight them. Before she was a senator, Elizabeth Warren teamed up with the head of the Independent Community Bankers of America in 2009 to get its support for creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to a new profile in The New Yorker. Warren met with the ICBA’s Camden Fine to persuade the group not to oppose her proposed financial regulations, because she said the effect on small banks would be minimal as opposed to the effect on the largest financial institutions. In an email he sent to his staff that started with “DESTROY BEFORE READING,” Fine said the “loopy” Harvard professor turned out to be someone they could work with “and perhaps shape an agency that has little impact on community banks but a huge impact on the unregulated part of the financial-services industry.”