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Elizabeth Warren memoir: 5 things we learned about liberal hero

Liberal darling Elizabeth Warren, freshman Democratic US senator from Massachusetts, released her memoir April 22, 'A Fighting Chance.' Here are five things to know about the book.

4. Timothy Geithner fares somewhat better

Mario Anzuoni/Reuters/File
Former US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is not wearing a seat belt in this picture.

As a newly minted presidential adviser setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Warren was invited to lunch by Treasury Secretary Geithner. First, he presented her with a cop’s hat. “Perfect!” she writes.

Then on the ride to the restaurant, she noticed that Geithner wasn’t wearing a seat belt. “Like a bossy third-grade teacher, I looked at him and said, ‘Put on your seat belt, Mr. Secretary.’ ”

“Like a naughty kid, he looked back and said, ‘I don’t have to.’ ” They were being driven in a government SUV with armed security, and Geithner assured her they were safe. She remained unconvinced.

During their lunch, “more than once, he said he was surprised that I believed so strongly in markets,” she writes. “More than once, I emphasized that markets are great – but only if there really is a level playing field where both sellers and their customers understand the terms of the deal.”

“On the drive back to the office,” she continues, “Secretary Geithner put on his seat belt.”

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

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