Bostonian of the Year

Every year at this time, the Boston Globe puts together a list of 10 notable Bostonians of the year. This year’s top pick is Elizabeth Warren. She definitely would be high on my list of the most interesting people in the news this year.

If you not familiar with Warren, she’s chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel. That’s the group which reviews how the Treasury is managing the TARP money, and gives Congress advice on what could be done to improve regulation of the financial system. She’s also a professor at Harvard specializing in bankruptcy law, and an author of several books about the problems the middle class has been facing in recent years.

If you’ve listened to some of the key players in the financial crisis, you’ve probably been pretty frustrated. It’s been pretty clear that most of them have been talking down to us, shading the truth, and being very self serving. Not Elizabeth Warren. She and Barney Frank are the only two people involved in this who I have felt were telling us the straight truth.

It’s been awfully nice to feel like there was at least one person in the middle of all of this who would say what she thought. It was also nice to have someone who would stand up to Hank Paulson and remind him that saving Citigroup and friends wasn’t going to accomplish anything if we lost America’s middle class in the process.

If you want to see why I think she’s so great, check out these two videos of her explaining TARP to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show (sorry about the ads):

Or watch her rake Geithner over the coals about AIG.

Once she’s got you all riled up, you can check out Matt Taibbi’s argument that we should draft her to run for President.