The tone of the questioning was initially courteous. Then Elizabeth Warren spoke. Peering over her glasses, she launched into a series of questions so scathing that the Senate chamber fell silent. "Since this massive, years-long scam came to light, you have said repeatedly, 'I am accountable,' " Warren said to Stumpf. "But what have you actually done to hold yourself accountable? Have you resigned as C.E.O. or chairman of Wells Fargo? . . . Have you returned one nickel of the millions of dollars that you were paid while this scam was going on?"
Warren pressed Stumpf on whether he had fired any senior executives over the revelations (he hadn't); paraphrased his comments, on an earnings call, about how lucrative the sales-quota strategy had been; and asked him to tell the audience how much money he had made personally as the company's share price shot up during the years of the fraud. When Stumpf declined to answer, Warren supplied the number: two hundred million dollars.
"A cashier who steals a handful of twenties is held accountable, but Wall Street executives almost never hold themselves accountable," Warren said. "Not now, and not in 2008, when they crushed the worldwide economy. The only way that Wall Street will change is if executives face jail time when they preside over massive frauds." She declared that Stumpf should be criminally investigated, accusing him of "gutless leadership."
A video of the exchange, posted on YouTube, became a sensation. One news site called it an "epic takedown"; another described Warren "verbally destroying" Stumpf. In May, when I met Warren on the campaign trail, she told me that she was "furious" as she went into the hearing. "He was building a business model for a huge financial institution that was built on knowingly cheating people," she said. "I figured that he deserved every punch he got."
The episode was a pointed demonstration of Warren's ability to tap into public anger about economic unfairness. Warren is one of the country's foremost critics of Wall Street firms and big banks, which make much of their profit, in her view, by abusing consumers and taxpayers. It's a perspective that has grown out of Warren's work as an academic and has shaped her ideas as a politician, propelling her from Harvard Law School, where she was a professor specializing in bankruptcy law, to the Senate, where she has represented Massachusetts since 2013
On many economic issues, Warren has been remarkably prescient. She has spent decades warning Americans about the pernicious effects of income inequality, predatory corporations, and consumer debt, and about the failures of our financial system—issues that are at the heart of the 2020 Presidential campaign.
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