Elizabeth Warren Grills Bank Regulators During First Senate Hearing [Video]

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) grilled bank regulators during the first Senate hearing she sat in on. The newly elected Democratic senator made her debut at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Thursday.

During the hearing, Warren asked regulators why they have yet to bring a Wall Street bank to trial.

Yahoo! News notes that the first-term Senator started the discussion by asking:

“What I’d like to know is tell me a little bit about the last few times you’ve taken the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street all the way to a trial.”

But Warren got no response, because, as Thomas Curry spoke up to explain, “we do not have to bring people to a trial.” Warren’s debut question was met with applause from those who believe federal regulators are not doing enough to punish the country’s largest financial institutions for mistakes they have made.

The Huffington Post notes that Senator Elizabeth Warren continued grilling the bank regulators. She later added, “I’m really concerned that ‘too big to fail’ has become ‘too big for trial.’ ”

Warren is known for taking on big banks, which is one reason her nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was thwarted by Wall Street lobbyists and Senate Republicans.

The first-term Senator ousted Republican Scott Brown in November after a hard-fought campaign. Her campaign was helped by her failed 2011 nomination to head the CFPB. With her record for taking on big banks, it will be interesting to see what else Warren does during her time on the Senate Banking Committee.

Check out the video below to watch Elizabeth Warren grill bank regulators.

[Image by David Shankbone from USA (Elizabeth Warren by David Shankbone 2010) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons]