Thursday, December 1, 2011

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.

20 comments:

Individualist said...

An Obligation to be FAIR

Federal Arragance Institutionally Required

Is this what she means?

Game Master Rob Adams said...

I really think Frank needs his own "Heres to you, Mr. mortgage banking scam race baiter. Thanks to your efforts the evil banks were forced to give loans to people who couldn't afford them. You handedly destroyed the housing market and set America back several decades in the process. So open up a cold bud lite oh sultan of misanthropic minorities because you really put the closure in foreclosure."

Tennessee Jed said...

It is a crazy world indeed when media will personally destroy Herman Cain's reputation on highly questionable unproven allegations, but will do nothing to help the investigation Maxine Waters. As Rush put it so well earlier this week (regarding Barney Frank) if having a prostitution ring run out of the basement of your town home can't get you to retire, whant can?

tryanmax said...

"Gangsta banks" huh? I suppose "loan sharks" would have made the vilification a little to obvious.

Anonymous said...

Indi: That makes as much sense as anything else about him.

Anonymous said...

ACG: Good summation. It could be a permanent toast to dear old Barney.

Anonymous said...

Tennessee: Frank was one of the vilest among a vile bunch of Congress critters. Waters will be vying for his crown (or tiara, as the case may be). I long ago gave up on expecting any proportionality in the MSM between questionable charges against Republicans versus proven charges against Democrats.

Anonymous said...

tryanmax: Yes, above all we must be subtle and nuanced.

AndrewPrice said...

I miss Barney Frank already.... well, no actually, I don't. Good riddance.

Anonymous said...

Andrew: I think I would actually miss his comic relief antics if he hadn't had so much power and influence. Watching him explode when caught with his hand in the cookie jar was always a lot of laughs. But overall, it's best he's going to be gone, gone, gone. At least from Congress. I'm sure MSNBC can find a spot for him, maybe opposite Al Sharpton.

Joel Farnham said...

LawHawk,

I think the stars are aligning. It has been getting really strange. Next you might start talking about someone kicking Pelosi out for ethical violations. Won't that be fun?

Talking about nuance, American Thinker has a great article warning about nuance.

BevfromNYC said...

I'm gonna miss Ol' Bawnee almost as much as I miss The Weiner. The problem is that he may be more dangerous as a former Congresscritter when hs no longer needs to pretend to be ethical. Maybe the investigation into Waters' ethics violations can move forward now and we can knock her out too.

Anonymous said...

Joel: Thanks for the "nuance" link. Very good. As for Pelosi, she'll be a lot harder to get rid of. Massachusetts had to lose several seats based on the census and it changed the demographics in Frank's newly-drawn district. With a 100% safe seat, Pelosi has little to worry about with ethical violations. Even if they removed her from her seat, she'd be re-elected and put right back where she was, only now with a big grudge to go with her nasty temperament.

Anonymous said...

Bev: I think that as a practical matter, we'll probably have to wait until after the 2012 elections. Pelosi's constituency won't abandon her under any circumstances, and now it would end up being just a distraction from beating Obama.

And look at Frank. Caught living with and supporting a male prositute who was running a prostitution ring out of Frank's condo. And he stayed in Congress. As the joke goes: "All he did was turn over a page."

StanH said...

My, my slobbering Barney Frank will be missed…not! If ever there was a statist pig bastard that should be happily dropping the soap in a prison shower, it’s him. It’s also a bit sad if we collapse as a country, that Barney will not be there for the tar-n-feathers action, I could, and would make and argument that he should be first on a rail. Instead he’ll just waltz away unscathed, the SOB.

As we’ve discussed before I don’t like political recriminations ala a Banana – Republic, but damn, these people are no better than a common criminal, hell worse, it’s sanctioned. We have to fire enough of these political creeps in coming elections to get at the hive, and put some asses in a sling. God! I hate these bastards.

Anonymous said...

Stan: I think all of us feel pretty much the same way. I don't claim to have all the facts, but with one exception, I don't think Frank has actually committed any actions which are criminal in nature (unless you consider screwing America criminal).

Ethics investigations don't extend past the member's term, so that wouldn't help. In other words, without further substantiated violations Frank will just walk away from all his wrongdoing with no penalty of any kind.

The one exception I mention is the prostitution issue. But even that is very dicey. The statute of limitations on criminal wrongdoing is tolled (suspended) if a criminal charge is launched against a Congressman while he is in office. But as far as I know, Frank himself was never charged with a crime, so it may be too late anyway. It would be hard to prove, even at the time it occurred, that Frank himself was an active part of a criminal conspiracy. All these years later, it would be nearly impossible.

We need to dedicate ourselves to what can be done now, rather than what should be done but won't later. As much as it grates on my nerves, I think Frank has dodged the bullet entirely.

T-Rav said...

I had to laugh the other day when Frank announced his retirement. On Fox News' "The Five," Bob Beckel (a huge liberal) said he thought Frank was one of the greatest men currently serving in the House, and then seemed genuinely astonished when everyone else shot him down. What Frank did that was ever great, I can't fathom. And now I will get off before the temptation to make a really disgusting joke about him become too great.

Writer X said...

When the going gets rough, the not-so-tough call it quits. Especially after they ruin the greatest country on the planet. I say Good Riddance. And shouldn't Maxine Waters be in jail already?!

Anonymous said...

T-Rav: I love Bob Beckel. He is so genetically Democrat that the obvious regularly escapes him. Without Beckel, many roundtable discussion would be boring. He livens things up by saying the most outrageous things, and saying them with conviction. He's nuts, of course, but I love him.

Anonymous said...

WriterX: I'm not sure how much of Frank's resignation is attributable to the re-districting as opposed to his advancing age and the growth of moderate-conservatism in Massachusetts. In any event, Congress is well rid of him, as are the entire American people. I'm also considering that he is so sleazy that he has made some kind of under-the-table deal which will result in more money for him as well as some kind of power-sharing agreement with the other liberal Democrats.

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