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Elizabeth Warren (the Harvard professor and self-styled “cop on the beat” who protects consumers from Wall Street) left Washington last year after failing to gain enough Senate support to be confirmed as director of the new consumer financial protection agency she championed.
Now, as if in a sequel, Warren will return to the U.S. capital having been remade into a senator herself just as Congress prepares its first revisions to the landmark Dodd-Frank Act enacted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
As a senator, Warren gains both a bully pulpit and a vote, both powerful tools in the debate over whether and how to re- regulate banks and bankers. And it comes with a secret weapon as well – the unofficial prerogative of a senator to single-handedly place “holds” on legislation or nominations.
The question in Washington is whether Warren will come back as the same partisan warrior she was when she left, or whether she will adopt the milder manner needed for deal-making and legislating.
“The issue is whether her strong views will be tempered by the need to get things done” – said Ernest Patrikis, a partner at White & Case LLP and a former Federal Reserve Bank of New York lawyer. “It is one thing to criticize; it is another to become an effective legislator.”

Elizabeth Warren.

U.S. Sen.-elect Elizabeth Warren will likely get the rock-star treatment from fellow Democrats when she arrives in Washington in January, but wary Republicans will be ready for a fight – pundits said.
“She knows Washington well now, she had trial by fire and came out of it quite successfully” – said Washington, D.C.-based Democratic strategist Matt Bennett. “She’s got a very close personal relationship with the president, which most first-year senators don’t have. That’s going to give her real status in Washington.”
That means Warren won’t have the typical rookie-senator path. Democrats are likely to promote her wildly, and she could get big play on Sunday morning talk shows and elsewhere.
But the honeymoon will be quick.
“Initially everybody will be cordial, everybody will put their happy face on” – said Beltway GOP strategist Keith Appell. “But given her statements, I don’t think it will be long before she crosses swords with Republicans.”
Warren hit the streets of Southie to thank voters yesterday morning just hours after her historic win, vowing to reach across the aisle — in the mold of her defeated rival U.S. Sen. Scott Brown — when she hits Capitol Hill in January.
“Scott Brown was exactly right when he said bipartisanship is important” – the newly elected liberal firebrand said outside the Broadway T Station in South Boston, where she kick-started her campaign 14 months ago. “It is important, and I hear that loud and clear.”

One of Wall Street‘s worst nightmares came true last night. No, not Barack Obama‘s victory over Mitt Romney but Elizabeth Warren‘s Senate victory in Massachusetts.
If you’re not familiar with Warren, here’s a briefer on her tense relationship with Wall Street – She’s a former Harvard Law School professor, former White House official who served as a special advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury where she helped create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
In doing so, Warren made plenty of adversaries particularly among the Republican party where the CFPB is viewed as a burdensome Wall Street regulator.
Wall Street‘s biggest banks they likely haven’t forgotten a $20 billion suggestion Warren made in Sept. 2011. Back then, Warren and her newly created CFPB produced a 7-page report for the 50 state Attorneys Generals who were leading the investigation on improper foreclosure procedures by Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial. In the report, the CFPB said banks dodged more than $20 billion in expenses between 2007 and 2010 by taking shortcuts when servicing troubled home loans.
At the time the report was presented the banks and AGs were engaged in settlement talks, and there were reports that the financial firms would cough up somewhere between $5 billion and $30 billion. When Warren presented her report she balked at the $5 billion figure saying it “would seem too low” considering “rough estimates suggest the largest servicers may have saved more than $20 billion through under investment in proper servicing during the crisis.”
In the end, banks ended up settling for a whopping $25 billion.
Oh, and don’t forget Warren’s calls to break up banks by reinstating a more modern version of Glass-Steagall. That’s not winning her any love from any big bank.