Warren suggested a Financial Product Safety Commission in a 2007 article; Obama proposed it to Congress in June as the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Speculation is (wishes?) she could head the agency. Bloomberg.com profiles her life:

Warren began at George Washington at 17. At 19, she married mathematician Jim Warren, who worked at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and finished her degree at the University of Houston. They divorced in 1978. Her second husband, Bruce Mann, is Harvard’s Carl F. Schipper Professor of Law and author of 2002’s “Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence” (Harvard University Press, 358 pages, $29.95).

Warren said she doesn’t know her credit score — “I assume it’s good” — and maintains zero Visa and MasterCard balances.

“Credit cards are like snakes: Handle ‘em long enough and one will bite you,” she said. “You have to remember what are incomes to banks are outgoes to families.”

Obama, with whom she attended a campaign event during the presidential race, read her work before proposing the consumer agency, according to Warren. […]

In her role overseeing the TARP, Warren has been critical of the administration, accusing the Treasury Department of undervaluing the stock warrants that were supposed to compensate taxpayers when banks repay their bailouts. A lack of transparency about how TARP functions “erodes the very confidence” it was to restore, her committee said in a report.

Named in May as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, Warren teaches three days a week at Harvard, flying to Washington and New York for meetings, sometimes stopping just long enough to charge her laptop.

Sample critic:

“It is positively Orwellian that, through this legislation, Democrats will empower an unelected bureaucrat to tell their fellow citizens whether or not they can fly on an airplane, take a vacation or purchase a home,” Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican on Warren’s TARP panel, said Oct. 22.

Orwellian to limit borrowing when excessive, under-capitalized, over-extended lending is what brought capitalism to near total collapse? I don’t think so! On top of her Harvard salary and income from nine books (two authored with her daughter) her TARP job paid $114,733.04 through Sept. 30. She’s worth every penny!