If you can't beat 'em, co-opt 'em

Huge financial institutions thought they could get off Scott-free. Oops.

Now they want to make nice with Sen.-elect Elizabeth Warren (D-their worst nightmare).

“They’ll do what big companies always do,” said [David D’Alessandro, former chief executive of John Hancock]. “They’ll say, ‘The election’s over and what contortions do we have to perform to get on her good side?’ I’m sure they’re already figuring out which lobbyists might get in good with her, how to get their chief executives to have breakfast with her.”

It's not as though Warren is Che Guevara! Plutocratic fatcats tried during the election to portray her that way, but she is fair-minded, probably already inclined enough to cooperate with legitimate economic and local interests. She understands, if anyone this side of Barney Frank does, that an honest financial services industry is in fact critical to an equity-financed economy.

Warren just believes that banking should be free of extortion, fraud, skimming, and outright theft.

Only a crony capitalist could argue with that.