Ding, Dong, The Witch Is--Leaving

Which old witch? The Fannie Mae witch. The Wicked Witch of the East, aka Rep. Barney Frank of Taxachusetts, has announced his retirement. Frank first tried his financial wizardry out by maintaining a male prostitution ring located in his condominium (condom-inium?). He liked the results so much that he moved on to bigger things (pardon the expression). His next choice of "roommate" was the much more important head of Fannie Mae, a financial institution which played a major role in America's financial meltdown.

Rep. Frank has a record of accomplishment matched by very few American politicians. But that's a little like saying that Stalin had a major impact on Russia. In his role as both race and poverty pimp, Frank was a major player in blocking significant reform at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage giants. His obstructionist tactics on reform, combined with his love for what liberals laughingly call "affordable housing" were major factors in the housing bust that brought on the biggest financial collapse since the Crash of 1929.

Frank does not even attempt to cover up his version of rabid egalitarianism. In fact he's proud of it. And if it takes bringing down the entire American economy in order to guarantee home ownership to people who can't afford the mortgages because their welfare checks and food stamps won't cover the monthly payment--so be it. By opening up the housing market to the credit-unworthy, in massive numbers, Frank was instrumental in creating the inevitable mortgage mess.

Frank was privy to all the public records and private government documents that indicated that his "home ownership for everyone" was about to send the housing market off the cliff. But nothing motivates a professional liar more than an opportunity to distort the facts. So just before the housing market fell into the abyss, Frank assured the administration and the public that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the entire housing market were in sound financial condition.

After the Democrats took solid control of Congress and fellow socialist Barack Obama became President, Frank was rewarded for his dishonesty with the chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee. Talk about putting the fox in charge of the hen house! Frank immediately blamed the Bush administration for the financial crisis, and vowed to remake the American economy. Forget the housing market. Frank set his sights on the entire American financial system, starting with rigid government control and massive federal "investment" to stave off the collapse of private businesses that were "too big to fail."

The first and major targets of the too-big-to-fail scam were the banks and mortgage lenders. The crony socialism of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were now enhanced by more and more government involvement in the banking sector. If forcing banks to make bad loans was good before, it became even better with the government that prints the money now a hovering presence essentially sitting on the bank boards of directors. His ascendancy also brought us Dodd-Frank and Government Motors (with the feds sharing power with the unions running the same corporation they drove into the ground with pension and retirement benefits).

Before you start celebrating the rush for the exit of Barney Frank, consider his most-likely successor. While Frank was pushing legislation to make it even easier for the unemployed and unemployable to purchase houses with money they didn't have, Rep. Maxine Water (D-California) pushed for rules requiring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite home loans with no down payment. Waters is now in line to replace Frank.

Waters is a real jewel who brings race-baiting into the financial formula of mortgage giveaways. As Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were already becoming dangerously over-leveraged with scam mortgages, Waters prevented the necessary financial reforms from including the two mortgage guarantors. Her own words: "[Stringent requirements for down payments and income verification] discriminate against minorities and the poor." Imagine that. Banks refusing to lend money to people who can't even put down a token down payment and have no income to make the monthly payments. Racists!

In addition, Waters remains under investigation for ethics issues revolving around her successful legislative provision that government oversight of affordable housing must exempt minority-owned banks. And guess whose husband is a major investor in one of those minority-owned banks (now near collapse). Yep, Maxine's. She and her husband received federal funds indirectly via a federal bailout of the failing minority-owned OneUnited Bank.

Waters' response to the ethics charges was to point to all the non-minority owned banks and refer to them as "gangsta banks." She announced that the Committee would go after every gangsta bank (in other words, banks that actually expect their borrowers to repay the loans) and, in her words, "tax them to death."

Her statement about her possible ascendancy and Frank's exit: "Barney is a fighter for fairness in financial services and civil rights for all, including minorities and LGBT Americans (they aren't minorities?). I will continue to champion practical regulations, while making sure they work for consumers and the financial sector, a sector which has the right to be profitable (really?), but the obligation to be fair, two concepts which are not mutually exclusive."

Buckle your seatbelts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.