Handily elected to the Senate, Warren has continued her successful career of baying at the moon. She routinely anathematizes Wall Street, the “corporate capture of the federal courts,” and loves to browbeat hapless regulators when the cameras are rolling. Inveighing against the high cost of student loans won her many headlines, and criticism from people who actually understood the issues on the table. Matthew M. Chingos and Beth Akers of the liberal Brookings Institution called Warren’s idea of financing student loans through the Federal Reserve discount window a “cheap political gimmick” and an “embarrassingly bad proposal.” …

It’s delusional to think that banks caused the recent recession, and that limiting banks’ investment activities will prevent another economic collapse. Countrywide Financial Corp. and its odious CEO Angelo Mozilo weren’t part of a bank when they were wreaking havoc on the mortgage market. Goldman Sachs, which notoriously bet both sides of the market downturn, wasn’t a bank, and nor was Lehman Brothers, the investment firm whose bankruptcy triggered the economic crash in the summer of 2008.