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Author
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Topic: Barney Frank Reads Handwritting On The Wall
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jwhop
Knowflake Posts: 4429
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 01, 2011 10:17 AM
  
...and decides he's not running for reelection!Yep, Barney can't take the heat and decided to get out of the kitchen. So now, the 2 members of Congress most responsible for bringing about the collapse of the US economy...Chris Dodd and Barney Frank have both declared themselves "Persona Non Grata"! Couldn't have happened to 2 more deserving morons. Barney, Banking and Brothels
by Jason Mattera
11/29/2011 The man who was complicit in bringing the American economy to its knees in 2008 won’t go down as, well, the man who was complicit in bringing the American economy to its knees.
Not if the “mainstream” media has anything to do with it, that is.
After his announcement that he won’t seek reelection, the Washington Post heralded the disheveled congressman Barney Frank as leaving a “legacy that crosses from legislative cornerstones to political confrontations to a historic place as the nation’s most prominent gay lawmaker.”
The paper continued: “On the left, Frank was a hero both for his effort to rein in the nation’s largest banks and for his role in promoting gay rights, having been the first member of Congress to declare his sexual orientation while in office.”
Then there’s the New York Times. To them, even Frank’s opponents carried a great deal of respect for the rambling Massachusetts politician. While “bankers often disagreed with Mr. Frank’s policies,” said the Times, “many respected his command of arcane areas of finance, a rarity on Capitol Hill.”
Get a room, boys.
The Times also noted that the “pugnacious lawmaker was quick to lambaste the industry in the aftermath of the financial crisis, and was loathe to apologize when bankers complained about the harsh tone.”
Unlike the Times, the Washington Post did mention Frank’s, er, interesting partner choices over the years, one that resulted in the infamous “allegations involving his relationship with a male prostitute who worked out of the lawmaker’s Capitol Hill townhouse.” (Side note: The Washington Post frames the boyfriend as someone who “worked” out of Barney’s house? I guess that’s one way to put it. Another was that Barney Frank’s Washington, D.C., apartment was also operating as gay brothel, of which Frank denies he had any knowledge. Snort.)
But what both the Times and the Post conveniently leave out is how Barney Frank was vociferously supportive of increasing home ownership among folks who should’ve never bought a home in the first place, a policy that injected steroids into the housing bubble and eventually collapsed the financial sector.
And because Barney’s boys in the mainstream media omit his role in the housing crisis that ricocheted across the world in 2008, it’s time for us to go back to the videotape.
When Barney was the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, he outright dismissed the fact that the two lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were facing grave solvency issues. To the contrary, he argued before the committee that such claims were embellishments.
“I worry, frankly, that there's a tension here. The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see,” babbled Frank. “I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disaster scenarios.”
Fast-forward to today: The American people had to shell out $700 billion in bailout money, are still on the hook for Fannie and Freddie, and got a huge regulatory bomb called “Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection” dropped on an American economy already overtaxed and overregulated.
The media’s free pass to the slobbering congressman is even more egregious because Frank wasn’t just defending the status quo. He was pushing for Fannie and Freddie to accelerate the flow of risky loans.
“I would like to get Fannie and Freddie more deeply into low-income housing and possibly moving into something that is more explicitly a subsidy,” drooled Frank in a House Financial Services Committee hearing back in 2003. “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation toward subsidized housing,” he added.
And when the GOP tried bringing attention to the fact that politicians should be more vigilant (not “roll the dice”) with taxpayer money, Frank allowed his comrades on the House Financial Services Committee to accuse Republicans of conducting a “political lynching” of Franklin Raines, the former chairman of Fannie Mae who engaged in accounting fraud and raked in a whopping $91 million in compensation and bonuses in the process.
Yes, this scam artist who nearly topped off $100 million at Fannie Mae by cooking its books was being “lynched” by Republicans for making inquiries into Fannie’s viability.
Now that’s some lib logic for you!
The media will blow wet kisses at Barney Frank’s political career, a sad fact considering that he spent his days in Washington gambling away the money you and I work for as though he were playing a cheap slot machine in the Vegas airport.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=47813&s=rcmp IP: Logged |
jwhop
Knowflake Posts: 4429
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 02, 2011 07:40 AM
If the Wall Street Occupiers were as smart as 5th graders, they'd be protesting in front of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac headquarters. They'd be protesting in the front yards of Barney Frank-D, Chris Dodd-D, Maxine Waters-D and Nancy Pee-Lousy-D. They'd be protesting in Lafayette Park in front of the O'Bomber-D infested White House...because these are the people most responsible for the economic collapse and the circumstances they're whining and moaning about.But, the OWS crowd are not as smart as 5th graders. They're the "useful idiots" of leftist..."Give Communism a Try" manipulators who keep them in the dark and feed them horseshiiiit like the mushrooms they are. December 2, 2011
The Fall of the House of Frank
By Ben Voth The imminent retirement of Barney Frank from the House of Representatives is an important rhetorical marker for one of the most significant financial disasters in U.S. history. The housing bubble and ultimate collapse was substantially informed, justified, and rationalized by the public arguments of Congressman Barney Frank. The conventional punditry of our nation, allied with a reactionary "occupation" movement in the streets, has constituted itself as a Greek chorus of support. They echo the idea that private banks have robbed Americans into destitution and that government must, in the classic Keynesian tale, come to our perpetual rescue in the form of regulation, taxation, and government guarantees. Frank's departure offers an inflection point to re-examine this cherished myth of the reactionary left. Frank's congressional website highlights frequently asked questions from constituents regarding his supervision of the federal government's financial arm for supporting mortgages, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In 2003, Frank publicly argued that those institutions were not in danger of causing an economic crisis. Frank would ultimately go as far as blaming anyone who dared question the wisdom of federal housing policy as the true culprits in any impending financial harm. In the mythmaking of the reactionary left, private banks created risky financial instruments predicated on the U.S. mortgage industry that were so intrinsically corrupt that it led to an inevitable collapse in the housing market in 2008. Private banks that were bailed out in TARP were collectively engaged in negligence and fraud that led to our present economic demise. The staggering loss of $6 trillion in housing values damaged the entire global economy. Noticeably absent from this commentary and storytelling is a sense of the federal government's key role in creating the crisis. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the largest financiers of mortgages in the United States. Preceding the crisis, congressional regulator Franklin Raines made public statements that there "was no risk" to investing in American mortgages. The deregulated view of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac combined with the regulator's statements that there was no risk in this area of financial investment was the equivalent of telling chronic gamblers that the casino will cover all bets. Not only did congressional regulators such as Barney Frank fail to constrain the federal agencies inflating the housing bubble, but they actively criticized in public those trying to prevent a crisis through increased regulation, and they worked to inculcate the view that there were no undue risks in the American housing market. Congressman Frank provides his own convoluted review of this crisis on his congressional homepage. In his account, the Bush administration took the inexplicable view of opposing regulation from 2001 to 2007 and then endorsed regulation in 2007, when Frank took leadership of the important housing issues relating to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to Frank, the regulations passed in 2007 by himself and President Bush were "too late." Outside the reactionary left's mythmaking offered by Congressman Frank, the Bush administration repeatedly called for heightened congressional oversight and regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac throughout both terms of the Bush presidencies. In reality, the Bush proposals to treat GSEs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the same as private banks in the regulatory world, were termed "inane" in 2005 by Congressman Frank. The reforms passed by Frank came in 2008 -- after the industry had collapsed -- despite Frank's 2005 assurance that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "fundamentally sound." The GSEs purchased considerable political sway in fall of 2006 to prevent the regulatory leveling sought by the Bush administration. Democratic senators such as Chris Dodd and Barack Obama received considerable financial support from the GSEs in a landslide sweep for Democrats in Congress that functionally guaranteed that the GSEs would fend off future regulatory reforms pushed by the president. Confronting this argumentative mythology is important. One reason for this is the confusing paradox posed by the 2008 financial crisis. In the telling of the reactionary left, this is a story of deregulation and its natural fruits. That telling justifies the inherently regulatory stature of the left. As is often the case, the story is half-true. GSEs such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were permitted to engage in lending practices at higher risk levels than their private counterparts because they essentially had the power of the federal Treasury printing presses behind them. This advantage was so acute, systemic, and well-understood by 2006 and 2007 that the global banking industry was highly invested in an American housing market that was "guaranteed to be without risk." This absurd contention was doomed to collapse at some point. Private banks were engaged in a rational enterprise of investing in a market "guaranteed" to grow and produce positive returns. A second reason for confronting this argumentative myth is the potential to perpetuate further crises using the paradoxical regulatory model of the reactionary left. The government exempts itself from the regulations it places on its private citizens. This is why the Congress will always have a superior health care system while it wrecks the one for its citizens. That is why the Congress can engage in fruitful insider trading like that practiced by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi while it rails its regulatory wrath against Wall Street. That is why we are headed for another boom/bust cycle in the student loan market that is financed in a manner highly similar to the former American housing market. The proper writing of Barney Frank's political epitaph is not important only as a matter of history. It is important as a moral enterprise in trying to allow history to teach us how not to repeat the errors of the past. The American public have an intuition that they have been abused by their political handlers. The surrounding punditry class continues to form the Greek chorus of support for half-truth stories of how we went from 4.7% unemployment in January of 2007 and falling deficits to 9-percent unemployment and ever-soaring trillions of debt in January of 2012. The retirement and a proper sense of the fiscal legacy of Barney Frank is an opportunity to restore some measure of sanity to America's economic house and possibly avoid a repeat of these mistakes.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/12/the_fall_of_the_house_of_frank.html IP: Logged |
katatonic
Knowflake Posts: 7221
From:
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 02, 2011 05:46 PM
please don't pretend that the big banks were hoodwinked into thinking they were trading in guaranteed investments. they were not and that is well known. a little less well known is how much they actually made on their "collapse".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mohwrs3yp7o fannie and freddie were a very small part of the problem in retrospect. and the more we learn the smaller they get. IP: Logged |
jwhop
Knowflake Posts: 4429
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 03, 2011 12:13 PM
I understand leftists would like to minimize the exposure demoscats have in the collapse of the US economy. That's not possible given the facts and given that demoscats have their fingerprints all over this economic meltdown.This is what we know...for certain. The Community Reinvestment Act became law under demoscat Jimmy Carter...and a demoscat Congress. Under demoscat President, Kommander Korruption, banks and other lenders were threatened by the US Justice Dept...demoscat Janet Reno and demoscat members of Congress to make residential real estate loans to borrowers who DID NOT qualify for home loans. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became the biggest underwriter of real estate mortgages in America. Fannie and Freddie also became the dumping grounds for demoscat foot soldiers who LOOTED Fannie and Freddie to the tune of about $200 Million in fraudulent executive bonuses AND funneled campaign contributions to demoscats to buy protection from regulations proposed by Republicans and George W Bush. The biggest recipient of Fannie and Freddie campaign contributions were Chris Dodd-D and Barack Hussien O'Bomber-D. The demoscat foot soldiers/LOOTERS of Fannie and Freddie were Franklin Raines, Jamie Goerlick and Tim Johnson...all 3 of whom became advisors to the campaign of....Barack Hussein O'Bomber after making off with almost $200 million in unearned bonuses from Fannie and Freddie. As late as July 2009, Barney Frank was running all over town touting Fannie and Freddie as "Sound investments". By September 2009...2 months later, Fannie and Freddie had to be taken over by the Feds and bailed out by US taxpayers. Those who owned stock shares in Fannie and Freddie lost their entire investments in those stocks...thanks to Barney Frank and his "expert" stock advice that Fannie and Freddie were "Sound investments". If Barney Frank were a private citizen executive of any stock brokerage in America, Barney Frank would be serving a prison sentence for misleading investors with fraudulent information. The underwriting of unsound mortgages was a staple of Fannie and Freddie...called "Sub-Prime" loans make to people who did not qualify for residential real estate loans and couldn't make the mortgage payments. ACORN...another demoscat organization acted as "mortgage brokers" on lots of those loans using bogus numbers and submitting bogus applications to Fannie and Freddie. Perhaps you remember ACORN? This the so called "Community Group" joined at the hip with our Community Organizer Barack Hussein O'Bomber. ACORN is also the group which has attempted to overthrow the election process in the US by registering illegal aliens, registering the same person numerous times under different names to vote in different voting precincts and registering people who are dead so one of their corrupt members could go vote in the dead person's name. When all those sub-prime mortgages started to default, it began a debacle in the housing markets which kicked the props out from under the US economy. Most people have no idea just how large a part of the private sector is represented by Housing. Now, those bankers you and other leftists complain about. Those bankers were threatened to make those sub-prime loans to borrowers who couldn't qualify under normal bank lending rules...and they were threatened by DEMOSCATS! Even the bank bailouts were engineered by DEMOSCATS and those bankers bought protection and bailout money from DEMOSCATS in the form of campaign contributions to DEMOSCATS. O'Bomber was the biggest recipient of Wall Street campaign contributions in US presidential history. DEMOSCATS even have their fingerprints on the derivative instruments called..."Credit Default Swaps". The Income Tax Evader and current Treasury Secretary..."Tax Cheat" Timothy Geithner worked on the mathematical equations used to price those Credit Default Swaps. That was the rationale used by DEMOSCATS to get Tax Cheat Timothy Geithner confirmed by the US Senate...under DEMOSCAT control...to Treasury Secretary. It was said no one knew as much about derivatives and the mess they had and were causing than..TAX CHEAT Timothy Geithner. Should banks and insurance companies like AIG have written and sold those Credit Default Swaps on sub-prime mortgages? Hell NO! That market was only going to remain solvent as long as residential real estate prices continued to rise. But let's not forget whose fingerprints are all over the economic debacle. Banks and other financial institutions...Wall Street...overwhelmingly contributed to DEMOSCATS, including Barack Hussein O'Bomber. They bought protection from prosecution AND taxpayer bailouts with their contributions. The Treasury Secretary...Tax Cheat Timothy Geithner-D worked on the equations to price those Credit Default Swaps. DEMOSCATS protected Fannie and Freddie all through the late 1990s and most of the first decade of 2000. Fannie and Freddie paid off..bought protection..by making large campaign contributions to DEMOSCATS...like Chris Dodd and Barack Hussein O'Bomber. If any financial institutions in America need to be investigated, prosecuted, reformed or dissolved, Fannie and Freddie are at the top of any rational list. But, in the so called reform of banks and other lenders...called the DODD/FRANK banking bill...passed by DEMOSCATS...which btw, institutionalizes bank bailouts in perpetuity...under "To Big to Fail"...NOT ONE WORD IN THAT BILL SO MUCH AS MENTIONS FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC. NOT ONE WORD! Facts are facts and....you should learn a few before attempting rational discussion.
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katatonic
Knowflake Posts: 7221
From:
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 03, 2011 07:28 PM
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/01/379332/former-banker-subprime-pushed/ while i realize thinkprogress translates to red idiots to you, jwhop, the source quoted as to the PRIVATE banks' practices re subprimes and targetting those who would fall for bad deals...was (surprise) a "private" bank employee in the thick of things. in any case when we are all partaying down at guantanamo will it matter? IP: Logged | |
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