Wednesday, December 15, 2010

On Blaming the Republicans Solely For the Financial Meltdown Part 3

The Boston Globe (not exactly a publication that's been hard on Democrats over the years) summarized their most recent interview with Barney Frank thusly: "He missed the warning signs because he was wearing ideological blinders. He said that he had worried that Republican lawmakers and the Bush administration were going after Fannie and Freddie for their own ideological reasons and would curtail the lenders' mission of providing affordable housing."...............................................................................................And like I've said in the previous posting, Congressman Frank's own words are themselves a mea culpa; "I was late in seeing it, no question."

3 comments:

Commander Zaius said...

Since I missed out on all the fun in part two, I will simply say hang all the bastards, pay with cash, and I have twenty-one days before I will be on a crusie ship watching Caribbean sunsets and drinking the boat dry.

Hell, I might even get laid.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

I put a beer in my freezer tonight, just to flash cool the bastard. Left it in a little too long and it froze. I then tried to put it in the microwave for a few seconds. Didn't fit......I guess what I'm trying to say is that, yeah, hanging 'em all sounds pretty damn good.

Dervish Sanders said...

You are misinterperting what Barney Frank said. It was NOT a "mea culpa". He meant he was late in seeing the extent to which Fannie and Freddie were screwed due to Republican sabotage.

NOT that he never realized there may be a problem because of the deregulatory legislation passed under Clinton.

Another excerpt from my blog...

Rep. Frank says he "sought directly to regulate subprime lending", but the legislation he and Michael Oxley (R-OH) worked on, the Finance Reform Act of 2005, was "defeated because, in the words of Mr. Oxley, the Bush administration gave his efforts the one-finger salute". According to Media Matters, when the Democrats regained control of the House in 2007 Rep. Frank (who became the new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee), "sponsored HR 1427, a bill to create the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), granting that agency general supervisory and regulatory authority over Fannie and Freddie and directing it to reform the companies...".

President bush signed the bill on 7/30/2008, but only because it was clear by that time that there was a problem (the housing market peaked in 2006). Five weeks later FHFA seized temporary control of Fannie and Freddie... [excerpt from my 8/28/2010 post "Republican Lies About Fannie, Freddie, And Frank").

You can continue spreading lies about Mr. Frank in parts 6-10 of this post, you'll still be WRONG regarding how much blame you're assigning Mr. Frank for the financial meltdown. Which is virtually none.