AAUW CO eNetwork BranchBook Discussion

August 19, 2015 6-7 pm

Moderator: Stormy McDonald

• 15 months since this book’s release• 4,584 ratings, 4.21 average rating, 826 reviews • Goodreads shows some 6,000+ who have it on

their “to read” lists.

• “This is a story about what’s worth fighting for, and how sometimes, even when we fight against powerful opponents, we can win.” 2014

• How many heard the audiobook read by author?(Raise hands, make typed comments

• How many have read/are reading this 277 pg. memoir? At least to page 25?...

Prologue: to give each one of our kids a fighting chance to build a future full of promise and discovery.

“I will be grateful to my mother and daddy until the day I die. They worked hard — really hard — to help my brothers and me along. But we also succeeded, at least in part, because we were lucky enough to grow up in an America that invested in kids like us and helped build a future where we could flourish.”

Relevant and Referenced Publications – Books• As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America.

Oxford University Press. 1989. ISBN 978-0-19-505578-8. (with Teresa A. Sullivan and Jay Westbrook)

• The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt. Yale University Press. 2001. ISBN 978-0-300-09171-7. (with Teresa A. Sullivan and Jay Westbrook)

• The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke. Basic Books. 2004. ISBN 978-0-465-09090-7. (with Amelia Warren Tyagi)

• All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan. Simon and Schuster. 2006. ISBN 978-0-7432-6988-9. (with Amelia Warren Tyagi)

• Casenote Legal Briefs: Commercial Law. Aspen Publishers. 2006. ISBN 978-0-7355-5827-4. (with Lynn M. LoPucki, Daniel Keating, Ronald Mann, and Normal Goldenberg)

• The Law of Debtors and Creditors: Text, Cases, and Problems (6th ed.) Aspen Publishers. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7355-7626-1. (with Jay Westbrook)

• Chapter 11: Reorganizing American Businesses (Essentials). Aspen Publishers. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7355-7654-4.

• Secured Credit: A Systems Approach. Wolters Kluwer. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7355-7649-0. (with Lynn M. LoPucki)

• A Fighting Chance. Metropolitan Books. 2014. ISBN 978-16277905296 Publications

Selected Articles

• Warren, E. (1987). "Bankruptcy Policy". The University of Chicago Law Review 54 (3): 775–814. JSTOR 1599826.

• Warren, E. (1992). "The Untenable Case for Repeal of Chapter 11". The Yale Law Journal 102 (2): 437–479. JSTOR 796843.

• Warren, E. (1993). "Bankruptcy Policymaking in an Imperfect World". Michigan Law Review 92 (2): 336–387. JSTOR 1289668.

• "Principled Approach to Consumer Bankruptcy". American Bankruptcy Law Journal (Heinonline.org) 71: 483. 1997.

• "The Bankruptcy Crisis" (PDF). Indiana Law Journal 73 (4): 1079. Fall 1998.

• Warren, Elizabeth; Westbrook, Jay Lawrence (January 2000). "Financial Characteristics of Businesses in Bankruptcy". SSRN Electronic Journal 73: 499. doi:10.2139/ssrn.194750.

• Himmelstein, DU; Warren, E; Thorne, D; Woolhandler, S (2005). "Illness and injury as contributors to bankruptcy". Health affairs (Project Hope). Suppl Web Exclusives: W5–63–W5–73. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.w5.63. PMID 15689369.

Selected Articles (Continued)

• "The Vanishing Middle Class". In Edwards, John, ed. (2007). Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream. The New Press. ISBN 978-1-59558-176-1.

• Himmelstein, David U.; Warren, Elizabeth; Thorne, Deborah; Woolhandler, Steffie J. (2005). "Illness and Injury as Contributors to Bankruptcy". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.664565.

• Himmelstein, DU; Thorne, D; Warren, E; Woolhandler, S (2009). "Medical bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a national study". The American Journal of Medicine 122 (8): 741–6. doi:10.1016/j.amjmed.2009.04.012. PMID 19501347.

Six Chapters Page

Choosing Battles 5-47

The Bankruptcy Wars 48-82

Bailing Out the Wrong People 83-126

What $1 Million a Day Can Buy 127-163

An Agency for the People 164-207

The Battle for the Senate 208-272

Epilogue: Fighting Again… and Again 273-278

Heard This Before?

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.... You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

WARREN, Elizabeth, (1949 - )

Senate Years of Service: 2013- Party: Democrat

WARREN, Elizabeth, a Senator from Massachusetts; born in Oklahoma City, Okla., June 22, 1949; attended George Washington University, 1966-1968; graduated University of Houston, B.S., 1970; graduated Rutgers University, J.D., 1976; elementary school teacher; lawyer; law professor; bankruptcy analyst; chair, Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program 2008-2010; special assistant to President Barack Obama for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 2010-2011; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 2012 for the term ending January 3, 2019.

Profile at Project Vote Smart Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election

Commission Legislation sponsored at The Library of Congress Makers Profile: Elizabeth Warren, video produced by Makers:

Women Who Make America

Courtesy U.S. Senate Historical Office

Some Salient Points Culled From the Book by Goodreads reviewer, Jeremy…

Implications of bankruptcy on both families and the nation as a whole:by 2001 (before the 2008 financial meltdown)...

*more children would live through their parents' bankruptcy than their parents' divorce.

*more women would file for bankruptcy than would graduate from college.

*more people would file for bankruptcy than would be diagnosed with cancer.

*some fifteen million families filed for bankruptcy in a single decade.

This article is part of the

Real Economy Project. Take action at

BanksterUSA.org.

Americans for Financial Reform

Americans for Financial Reform is a group that is working for reform in the banking and financial system. It describes itself as "a coalition of more than 250 national, state and local consumer, labor, investor, civil rights, community, small business, and senior citizen organizations that have come together to spearhead a campaign for real reform. Together, we are fighting for a banking and financial system based on accountability, fairness and security. The reckless and greedy behavior of big Wall Street banks caused a financial crisis that is costing us millions of jobs, billions of dollars in taxpayer funded bailouts, and trillions of dollars in lost homes and lost savings."[1]

Reforms AFR Wants• Fair rules of the road for consumers, and a strong, effective

Consumer Financial Protection Agency to set basic safety standards and protect families - and the market as a whole - from loans designed to trick and trap customers.

• A banking system that helps people buy and stay in their homes and invests in communities and businesses to create good jobs and strong neighborhoods.

• An end to big bank bailouts and megabanks that are "too big to fail."

• Transparency for all financial products and markets, and an end to the casino economy, so that Wall street can't keep making "heads they win, tails we lose" bets with our money.

• Executive compensation that rewards long-term value creation, not excessive risk-taking, and shareholder votes on executive pay.

• The democratization of the Federal Reserve, so that it is transparent and accountable to the public and independent of banking industry control.

AFR Personnel & Contact DetailsLisa Donner, Executive DirectorErin Kilroy, Administrative Manager[3]

Ed Mierzwinski

1629 K Street NW, 10th floorWashington, DC 20006

Phone: 202-466-3311

Email: info AT ourfinancialsecurity.org

Web: http://ourfinancialsecurity.org

AFR Members

• AARP• AFL-CIO• AFSCME• Alliance For Justice• American Family Voices• Americans for Democratic Action• Americans United for Change• Campaign for America's Future• Center for Digital Democracy• Center for Economic and Policy Research• Change to Win• Coffee Party• Color of Change• Common Cause• Consumer Action• Consumer Federation of America• Consumers Union• CREDO• Demos• Economic Policy Institute

• Essential Action• Green America• Greenlining Institute• Good Business International• Institute for Global Communications• International Brotherhood of Teamsters• MoveOn.org• NAACP• National Council of La Raza• National Urban League• National Workrights Institute• OMB Watch• Public Citizen• SEIU• Sojourners• Taxpayers for Common Sense• United for a Fair Economy• United Food and Commercial Workers• United States Student Association• USAction

Documentaries – available on Netflix (DVD only) or $2.99 rental on Amazon

• Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders (2006)

• Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

Links to Related Material Cited By Wikipedia

Senator Elizabeth Warren - Official U.S. Senate websiteElizabeth Warren for U.S. Senate - Official campaign websiteSenator Elizabeth Warren's channel on YouTubeElizabeth Warren collected news and commentary at The New York TimesElizabeth Warren at DMOZBiography at the Biographical Directory of the United States CongressProfile at Project Vote SmartFinancial information (federal office) at the Federal Election CommissionLegislation sponsored at The Library of CongressMakers Profile: Elizabeth Warren, video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America

Further reading• Lizza, Ryan (May 4, 2015).

"The virtual candidate : Elizabeth Warren isn't running, but she's Hillary Clinton's biggest Democratic threat". Profiles. The New Yorker 91 (11): 34–45. Retrieved 2015-07-01.

• Lopez, Linette. "Elizabeth Warren Introducing A Bill That Would Be Wall Street's Worst Nightmare." Business Insider. July 11, 2013.

• Warren, Eliz. & Amelia Warren Tyagi, All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan. Simon and Schuster. 2006. ISBN 978-0-7432-6988-9. (Elizabeth Warren with Amelia Warren Tyagi)

• Mann, Bruce 2002 & 2009, Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence (1800s)

• Sotomayor, Sonia 2013, My Beloved World, a Memoir

• Carroll , Morgan 2012, Take Back Your Government, A Citizen’s Guide to Grassroots Change

• Toobin , Jeffrey 2008, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court