The Washington Post reports on Elizabeth Warren's campaign finances: "New financial reports show the campaign took out a $3 million line of credit and drew out $400,000 that it ended up not using."
I scoured her campaign's latest Federal Election Commission report and other press coverage of this line of credit. The name of the person or financial institution providing this $3 million line of credit is not something I was able to find.
If it's a bank, though, it's a good example of how the financial industry provides valuable services to customers in ways that Warren and her ideological comrades are often too reluctant to acknowledge.
Any lender providing that line of credit had to make an assessment about its risk in making the funds available. It had to price the risk and either hold the risk or pass it along somehow. It had to have the funds on hand to provide liquidity that the Warren campaign lacked, arbitraging the time between when the campaign needed to spend the money (right away) and when it would have the funds to pay it back (later). These aren't such simple things to do, but the American financial industry does it so consistently and relatively easily that people, or at least Democratic presidential candidates, rarely notice or appreciate it.
A cynic might speculate that the loan was made somehow with an eye toward an eventual political reward from Senator Warren or President Warren, rather than mere interest and principal repayments. Even that, though, is a business decision that requires some assessment of the likelihood or possibility of Warren being able or willing to repay a debt in that way. Democrats often talk about wanting to crack down on "predatory" lenders, as if the lenders are out looking for non-credit-worthy individuals to loan money to. But it's the availability of money to borrow that allows long-shot candidates such as Warren to compete with better-funded campaigns such as Mayor Bloomberg's or Senator Sanders, rather than having to quit the race entirely. Requiring lenders to loan money only to blue-chip presidential campaigns would wind up hurting poorer presidential campaigns, such as Warren's.
Lending money to a presidential campaign isn't precisely the same as a mortgage or a payday loan. But there is enough similarity that Warren might want to pause to consider it the next time she feels the urge to demonize Wall Street or the rest of the financial industry. Without credit, Warren's presidential campaign might already be over.