Barney Frank says…
…”years of irresponsible failure to regulate have led us” to this crisis.
He fails to add the little detail that the “irresponsible failure to regulate” was his own, as Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, when he was the leader of attempt after successful attempt to block Republican calls for better regulation of Fannie and Freddie.
Fox News points it out, but how many people know? And Frank counts on most of the MSM to cover his sorry butt, just as the Boston Globe does here.
Monica Crowley was also on the minute or two of Fox cable news where I just viewed the hypocritical Frank quote. She was spitting mad, as am I. Crowley said,
“They [Frank and Chris Dodd, his Senate counterpart] should be going around Washington with bags over their heads.”
I doubt very much they are conscious of much hypocrisy. The narrative is that people who are dealing with large sums are investment money are probably Republicans. They already know that Republicans are selfish and have no interest in protecting the little guy. Their job, then, is to restrain Republicans to protect the little guy. Any resistance to their attempts to regulate is interpreted as shady evasion. Only their interventions are good ones – Republican attempts are a sham, a mere disguised attempt to exploit the regular guy. It is the Republican attitude toward markets that is seen as the problem. Everything is measured only along those lines: does this increase or decrease our regulatory power? Results are of no consequence – they are simply campaign fodder, whether they are good or bad.
Therefore, the only fault they might perceive in themselves is that they didn’t do enough last time and should fight harder this time.
…Frank counts on most of the MSM to cover his sorry butt…
I’m sorry, but that made me laugh out loud. Does that make me homophobic?
I was watching Frank last night, too, “…McCain doesn’t need to be here in Washington…”
McCain is a Senator and if he want to be in Washington for this very unique and important matter with the economy then he’s deserves a lot of credit for doing so; I’m impressed that McCain thinks outside the box and is a ”doer” — something we always knew, but you’re only as good as your last ”doner”.
” And Frank counts on most of the MSM to cover his sorry butt,”
And he needs every inch and second of MSM space since he has so much butt to cover.
Reminds me of the Stephen Wright line:
“It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.”
That Globe article just floored me. Barney Frank is claiming it was the GOP that fought regulation! As I recall, the GOP tried to introduce greater regulation on Freddie & Fannie back in’05! Every Republican voted for it and every Dem against with a threat of filibuster if it went to the floor. Seems an attempt (I think by McCain) to re-introduce it in 2007 was turned down by the Dem controlled Congress as well. Now it’s somehow the GOPs fault? What a crock!
MY reading of how this all came to where it is today leads me to conclude that the underwriting standards were so significantly lowered by Janet Reno in 1995 that to talk about regulatory oversight or lack thereof is to miss the point. If the banks were – and they were – strongarmed into aggressively marketing Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae to more and more people who truly had no business borrowing money for a home, how do you then use regulatory oversight to beat up on those same banks who were threatened by the Justice Department?
I think Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd are trying to kick sand in our eyes and deflect blame. They should not have been aggressively maintaining Bill Clinton’s expansive interpretation of the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act.
You don’t have to look any further than this:
link. It’s the politicians that took money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
link Politicans taking money from commercial banks.
link Politicians taking money from securities and investments.
I guess that pretty much covers it. If they’d known, I guess they would have sent some money Sarah’s way too.
Barney Frank is a National Disgrace.
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Maybe Barney isn’t the man we want to untangle a complicated and dangerous situation and come up with a solution. According to him he wasn’t shrewd enough to realize his lover was running a gay cathouse in the townhouse they shared.
This is what happens when people in power don’t get punished when they screw up. Everybody lets it slide cause that is just “business as usual”. Sickening how the oligarchs get to do things, like Sandy berger, that would land the rest of us in jail.
For all the reviling and vilification, Richard M Nixon did have the decency to resign.
I don’t know for a fact if Frank and Dodd are able to sleep at night; but they must since they do continue to appear on camera.
No, Barney ‘In the Mouth’ Frank et. al. did regulate. They allowed food stamps and unemployment checks to be allowed for mortgage assessments, among other things. Oh, yes, they did regulate, like the swine they are. Just remember, some animals are better than others… oink…
Manson may have been half right, unfortunately, he knew not who his real enemy was. Typical of the left.
That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in. Where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh, it’s got to be about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy, and getting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade — we have got to see trade as opportunity, not as, uh, competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation
We have trade missions back and forth. We– we do– it’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is– from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to– to our state.
years of irresponsible failure to regulate have led us” to this crisis
This is far from this time. If you go back to the Enron scandal that was the start of today crises.
There is nice article by titled Robert Bryce “From Enron to the Financial Crisis, With Alan Greenspan in Between”
Echoes Of Iraq War: White House Claims Bailout Will Pay For Itself»
Speaking of successful people, I wonder if this is true:
John McCain’s flight record. 20 hours of combat flight and 5 planes destroyed. (all of them ours/ 4 non-combat, although one of those was the result of a bomb exploding nearby and not his flying, so it doesn’t count)
http://www.keloland.com/custompages/kelolandblogs/sdmoderate/index.cfm?c=2119
Maybe the guy at that site is a liar. I don’t know.
Aren’t fighter pilots successes when they are actually flying aces?
I received an article from a friend, written in the SF Chronicle, in my e-mail box. It’s a simplified version of what has transpired concerning the current mess we are all in. It names names. An interesting read. Hillary backed away from the race too easily, and has been relatively quiet for quite some time. Now I know why. She figures by 2012 it will have quieted down, and she can make another run.
My sister lives in the greater D.C. area. Foreclosed houses are just being broken into and lived in by people who were removed for non payment.
We have a hell of a mess coming on. We have not seen anything yet. Anyone, everyone, regardless of political affiliation should be very angry at this mess.
It affects generations of those who have yet to arrive illegally, as well as future citizens yet to be born.
Allocating blame is a fool’s game. Every big disaster results from aggregation of many unhappy coincidences, it rarely have just one cause with predictable outcomes. This is impossible to suppress buisness activity cycles by any type of regulation without concurrently stifle economic growth. Pro-growth policy of cheap and easy credit makes is also pro-inflation and makes more probable appearance of speculative bubbles; overstabilisation leads to stagnation.
I don’t buy your thought about it being a fool’s game in this situation, sergey.
He’s also known as the maverick, though. Taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he’s been talking about – the need to reform government.
I’m ill about the position that America is in and that we have to look at a $700 billion bailout. At the same time we know that inaction is not an option and as Senator McCain has said unless this nearly trillion-dollar bailout is what it may end up to be, unless there are amendments in Paulson’s proposal, really I don’t believe that Americans are going to support this and we will not support this. The interesting thing in the last couple of days that I have seen is that Americans are waiting to see what John McCain will do on this proposal. They’re not waiting to see what Barack Obama is going to do. Is he going to do this and see what way the political wind’s blowing. They’re waiting to see if John McCain will be able to see these amendments implemented in Paulson’s proposal.He’s got the track record of the leadership qualities and the pragmatism that’s needed at a crisis time like this.Unfortunately, that is the road that America may find itself on. Not necessarily this as it’s been proposed has to pass or we’re going to find ourselves in another Great Depression. There has got to be action – bipartisan effort – Congress not pointing fingers at one another but finding the solution to this, taking action, and being serious about the reforms on Wall Street that are needed.
Sorry, but the problems at Frannie didn’t emerge suddenly when Democrats gained control of the banking committee and congress less than a year ago.
The Republicans controlled all three branches of government for the previous 7 years and Congress for 12 years.
The reforms proposed by Republicans in 2005 were opposed by the Bush administration along with no less a repository of Ayn Rand fable, self-congratulation and corporate welfare than the American Enterprise Enterprise.
But, indeed, it pays more to pay attention to what is going on today, now, right before our eyes.
After trying to pull out of the debate and “suspending” his campaign — whatever that means — McCain arrives to Washington and utters hardly a word at the stormy, fateful meeting where Paulson tries to sell his plan to Bush and the Congress.
When the meeting ends, McCain can’t even say whether he supports the Paulson plan — backed by Bush (who were supposed to forget exists) or the alternative proposed by Republicans in congress. The GOP alternative calls for, get this, TAX CUTS AND LESS REGULATION.
that’s American Enterprise Institute. They called the preposed Frannie reforms in 2005 “disastrous.”
The reforms proposed by Republicans in 2005 were opposed by the Bush administration
And who opposed the 2003 reforms?
Anvil we are. Meet Mr. Hammer.
I hope our temper is up to the impact.
And Barney Frank needs to be building desks somewhere where he can’t kill any more economies.
The Finger Says:
Its a nice talking point that ‘republicans support less regulation’ but I don’t know any that support less regulation of the banking system.
So why do the dems want an additional 56 billion? Lunch money? And why is ACORN slated to get some money from this bailout? To pay court costs?
This is deep doo-doo stuff, and they still can’t quit playing politics. Throw each and every bum out. The people who should be under investigation on the Democrat and bureaucrat sides are RUNNING the SHOW.
What I want to know is what it will take for this ACORN mulch to hit the public fan.
It affects generations of those who have yet to arrive illegally, as well as future citizens yet to be born.
There are more than 160 thousand in Iraq and Afghanistan most of them low income citizens, shell be back and face the reality also when they com back home.
The Finger – But Frank and Dodd were still Democrats before 2005, correct? And in the House and Senate? And deep-sixing reform bills?
Check out C-span website which has video of this morning’s call-in show where Frank addresses these accusations directly. It’s fun to watch people trying to foist the responsibility for this mess on him try to debate him one-on-one. It’s embarrassing for them. Sort of like waching pro football team take on a high school team.
Also, according to him on Cspan,there will be no money for Acorn or any other earmark in the bill they are working on.
Yep. Frank’s a professional. A professional crook, but still a professional.
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