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By Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) — In Elizabeth Warren’s world, credit card contracts would be so simple a teenager could read and understand them in four minutes. Loans would be as easy to compare as toasters, and online credit scores would be free. “We need a new model: If you can’t explain it, you can’t sell it,” said Warren, 60, a Harvard University law professor who is head of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program , in an interview. The 1966 high school debate champion of Oklahoma may get what she wants. The House of Representatives will vote in December on her idea . She suggested a Financial Product Safety Commission in a 2007 article in the magazine Democracy. President Barack Obama proposed it to Congress in June as the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Warren won’t discuss whether she may be a candidate to lead the authority, which would have the power to regulate $13.7 trillion of debt products. A Warren nomination would tell banks that Obama is determined to force reduced checking-account fees and limit lender claims in mortgage advertising, among other measures the industry opposes, said Thomas Cooley , dean of New York University’s Stern School of Business. “She is an ideological crusader,” Cooley said in an interview. “She is a person who will stir up a lot of trouble.” In a column in Forbes magazine, Cooley accused her of “waging a self-righteous holy war.” The criticism doesn’t bother her, Warren said. She learned to shake things off growing up in Norman , Oklahoma, with three older brothers “in a family of car parts and fist fights,” she said. “It was get tough or die, and I decided to get tough.” Coors Light Her detractors confuse prairie-born populism with elitism, probably because of her job, she said. On the faculty of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Harvard since 1992, she is the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law . Before Harvard, she taught law at five other universities in four states. “Those comments are intended to be nasty, not accurate,” said Warren, who graduated from high school at 16 and said she prefers Coors Light beer over iced tea. “I think a lot of Americans are not sure which side Washington is on, the side of banks or the side of the people.” Warren is a superstar to anyone who has been baffled by financial fine print, according to Arianna Huffington , editor- in-chief of the Huffington Post , a news and opinion Web site. “She’s been courageous in a culture where every other official is checking to see if what they’re saying is going to affect their career,” said Huffington, who met Warren when the professor was a guest on CNBC’s “ Squawk Box ” and Huffington was hosting. “If she doesn’t get the job, it would really mean that the special interests have won.” Freedom of Choice A measure the House Financial Services Committee approved on Oct. 22 would empower the consumer agency to set limits on checking account overdraft fees and to ban credit cards with escalating rates and lending practices it deems predatory. Similar legislation is before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. If such an authority had existed, Americans might not have taken out the subprime and other mortgages that touched off the recession when house prices fell, Warren said. Congress is rewriting financial rules after the 2007-2008 crisis caused $1.67 trillion in writedowns and losses. The agency’s opponents, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Bankers Association and the Financial Services Roundtable , contend another layer of regulation would bury small community banks and rob consumers of freedom of choice in making basic financial decisions. ‘Pitchforks and Torches’ “It is positively Orwellian that, through this legislation, Democrats will empower an unelected bureaucrat to tell their fellow citizens whether or not they can fly on an airplane, take a vacation or purchase a home,” Representative Jeb Hensarling , a Texas Republican on Warren’s TARP panel, said Oct. 22. He declined through his spokesman, George Rasley, to be interviewed for this story. If Congress creates the watchdog, the director should have “a working knowledge of how financial institutions operate,” said Scott Talbott , the financial roundtable’s chief lobbyist. “The time for pitchforks and torches is over,” Talbott said in an interview. “The focus should be on reforming the system and making it better.” Warren’s Wall Street experience consisted of a three-month summer associate position in 1975 at Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft , the financial district’s oldest law firm, according to its Web site. Her aunt and mother moved to Rockaway, New Jersey, to care for her 4-year-old daughter while Warren worked at 2 Wall Street. At first, she said she thought she was being made fun of as a rookie from the sticks. Pork Bellies “I got out my little notebook, and the senior partner started talking about frozen pork belly futures,” Warren said, recalling an early meeting. “How dumb do they think I am? I wasn’t going to fall for it because I am a sophisticated person. It finally occurs to me that he is serious, and that there is a market for pork bellies.” At Cadwalader she earned “an astonishing amount of money” that she used to get braces, she said. By the time she received her degree in 1976 from Rutgers School of Law in Newark, New Jersey, she was expecting her second child, Alex. After Wall Street firms showed no interest in hiring a pregnant recent graduate, Warren said she worked from home, writing wills and doing real estate closings for “anyone who came in the door.” “At Cadwalader, I did a $9 million fifth mortgage on a ship,” she said. “In private practice, I worked for a couple starting a little business who had to negotiate some insurance contracts for about $18,000, but it mattered more to them than that ship mortgage mattered to anyone.” Trusting FDR Warren said she probably inherited her populism from her grandparents, who built one-room Indian schools during the Great Depression. While they didn’t understand the financial world, they knew President Franklin D. Roosevelt made their money safe by establishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. , she said. There was little cash to spare during her childhood, she said. Her father was a maintenance man and her mother worked part-time taking catalog orders. Warren didn’t let them know she paid $25 application fees with baby-sitting money until she won a scholarship to George Washington University in Washington. “Then, I could tell them I could go to college,” she said, “and someone else would pay for it.” Warren began at George Washington at 17. At 19, she married mathematician Jim Warren, who worked at the Johnson Space Center in Houston , and finished her degree at the University of Houston. They divorced in 1978. Her second husband, Bruce Mann, is Harvard’s Carl F. Schipper Professor of Law and author of 2002’s “Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence” (Harvard University Press, 358 pages, $29.95). Credit Card Snakes Warren said she doesn’t know her credit score — “I assume it’s good” — and maintains zero Visa and MasterCard balances. “Credit cards are like snakes: Handle ‘em long enough and one will bite you,’’ she said. ‘‘You have to remember what are incomes to banks are outgoes to families.’’ Obama, with whom she attended a campaign event during the presidential race, read her work before proposing the consumer agency, according to Warren. She is the author of nine books, including two with daughter Amelia Tyagi, 38, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant who runs an executive placement office. Tyagi and her mother wrote ‘‘The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke’’ (Basic Books, 255 pages, $26) in 2003 and ‘‘All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan’’ in 2005 (Free Press, 289 pages, $24.95). Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , a Nevada Democrat, appointed Warren to the five-member TARP committee after she impressed him with her ‘‘strong pro-consumer views,’’ according to Jim Manley , Reid’s spokesman. Not Always Mainstream Warren, who began testifying before Congress more than a decade ago, wasn’t always accepted as a mainstream figure in Washington, said Representative Brad Miller , a North Carolina Democrat. He introduced a bill to create a Financial Product Safety Commission in 2007, and it went nowhere because consumers’ rights weren’t recognized as significant, he said. ‘‘It’s now a very serious proposal,” Miller said in an interview. “If it were not for her, I don’t think it would have gotten this much support. She knew what was important, what was necessary and what would help the bill get through,” Barney Frank , chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, called Warren a “great partner” in crafting the legislation. The Massachusetts Democrat said he speaks with her by phone twice a week. In her role overseeing the TARP, Warren has been critical of the administration, accusing the Treasury Department of undervaluing the stock warrants that were supposed to compensate taxpayers when banks repay their bailouts. A lack of transparency about how TARP functions “erodes the very confidence” it was to restore, her committee said in a report. Odd Hours Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner declined to comment for this story through his spokesman, Andrew Williams . Named in May as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World , Warren teaches three days a week at Harvard, flying to Washington and New York for meetings, sometimes stopping just long enough to charge her laptop. She keeps a pace few could maintain, Miller said. “My last e-mail from her one Saturday night was after 11 p.m. and the first one on Sunday morning came before 7 a.m.,” he said. “It made me think she keeps some odd hours.” Warren travels to Los Angeles, where her son and daughter live, about every six weeks. She said she was there to share Halloween with her grandchildren, Octavia, 8, and Lavinia, 4, dressed as a sheep to complement Lavinia’s Bo Peep costume. Not Obama Country Her students suggested she be a guest on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart ” on Comedy Central, she said. She was also interviewed by Michael Moore for his documentary, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” in which she makes a one-minute appearance in a segment about TARP. She’ll “talk to anyone” about consumer protection and her belief that government should stop bank profits earned at the expense of people cheated by “tricks and traps,” she said. “I made a decision at the beginning that the experts wrecked this economy and the public has a right to know what’s going on,” she said. “It’s our economy on the line and the experts can’t be trusted. I want everyone to be part of the solution to how we want to change our economic world. If it’s risky or makes me look stupid to someone, so be it.” Warren, whose TARP job paid her $114,733.04 through Sept. 30, has a high profile the White House should appreciate, said Damon Silvers , an oversight panel member, in an interview. “We were out in Colorado at a hearing for rural finance and people came up to her,” Silvers said. “That wasn’t exactly Obama country out there, if you know what I mean.” Warren reflects Obama’s belief in the good that government can do, said Howard Marks , chairman of Oaktree Capital Management LLC in Los Angeles, who said he met Warren when Huffington brought her to a dinner at his house. “We found out over the last eight years what kind of regulation you get from an administration that doesn’t believe in regulation,” said Marks, whose firm has about $67 billion in assets under management. “Now we’ll find out what oversight we will have from people who do.” To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Pittman in New York at mpittman@bloomberg.net ; Bob Ivry in New York at bivry@bloomberg.net .