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Has Barney Frank No Shame?

Posted by GayPatriotWest at 7:42 am - October 7, 2008.
Filed under: 110th Congress,American Embarrassments,Arrogance of the Liberal Elites,Conservative Discrimination

Instead of admitting his own responsibility in the current financial mess, Barney Frank does what he and Democratic partisans always do when their records are called into question: attack conservatives.  It’s not the same blame he attempted to ladle out when Bill O’Reilly pressed him.  Now the Massachusetts Congressman is accusing conservatives of racism:

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank claims conservatives are trying to partly blame the nation’s economic woes on black people.

“This is an effort I believe to appeal to a kind of anger in people,” Frank, a Newton Democrat who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, today told a Boston foreclosure-prevention forum.

Frank charged that conservatives aim to shift blame for the market meltdown away from Wall Street and toward minority-lending laws like the federal Community Reinvestment Act.

Um, Barney, if you bothered to read the conservative stuff, you’d find they’re looking at more than just the Community Reinvestment Act. It’s not they, but you who are trying to shift the blame.

What is it with liberals? Instead of taking responsibility for their own messes (or, in the case, their own involvement in a mess which had many authors) and blame others.

Unable to acknowledge conservative arguments, Barney Frank has decided that Republicans harbor racist sentiments.  I guess he just borrowed a page from the liberal playbook.

He’d rather level false and absurd charges against conservatives than accept his responsibility. Once again, let me repeat, in the interest of recovering from this financial mess with plunging further into recession, Barney Frank should resign from the House Financial Services Committee.

Ed Morrissey who alerted me to Barney’s latest comment provides a nice summary of the conservative view of the mortgage meltdown which I provide below the jump (H/t JammieWearingFool):

The CRA was only a small part of the cause of the collapse. It affected loans only at the margins. The Clinton administration opted for more aggressive enforcement, and “community organizers” like ACORN used that to file nuisance complaints that could keep banks from merging and acquiring other banks. That may have pushed lenders into lowering standards on a handful of loans, but only to enough of an extent to avoid government sanctions.

In that sense, the CRA is a bit of a red herring. The real cause of the collapse was the Congressional push for Fannie and Freddie to support subprime lending by purchasing the paper from lenders, which is related to the same policies that generated the CRA but isn’t the CRA itself. Lenders make money one of two ways: keeping the paper themselves and getting the interest over the term of the loan, or selling the paper to someone else for a guaranteed short-term profit. When Fannie and Freddie began buying all of this paper, they created a huge demand for subprime loans — and lenders responded by offering easy money to almost anyone who applied. They threw out income requirements and equity thresholds (such as down payments) and generated tremendous short-term profits for themselves … while Fannie and Freddie assumed all the long-term risk.

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18 Comments

  1. [...] GayPatriot » Has Barney Frank No Shame? [...]

    Pingback by Barney Frank Says We Are Racists For Criticizing Congress | Right Voices — October 7, 2008 @ 8:45 am - October 7, 2008

  2. Shame can not exist unless one believes in personal responsibility. As a gay Marxachusetts Democrat, Frank simply does not believe in it.

    Comment by V the K — October 7, 2008 @ 9:12 am - October 7, 2008

  3. Precisely because he is worried about losing his job. The man shouldnt just resign his chairmanship, or from the committee, he is largely responsible for one of the greatest financial diasters in American history, the entire world economy in crisis — he should resign from congress. Enron was a kerfuffle compared to this. We already know his involvement has been unethical, is it possible that he has also done something illegal on top of just monumentally, earth-shatteringly stupid and corrupt? Id say yes. Im looking forward to the FBI report, and Im not saying it will happen, but I wouldnt be surprised if Frank winds up in jail. Nor would I be disappointed.

    Comment by American Elephant — October 7, 2008 @ 10:20 am - October 7, 2008

  4. [...] Has Barney Frank No Shame? [...]

    Pingback by GayPatriot » Democrat Party’s New Theme Song — October 7, 2008 @ 10:21 am - October 7, 2008

  5. The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 10/07/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.

    Comment by David M — October 7, 2008 @ 10:42 am - October 7, 2008

  6. Does Barney Frank have some data on the the profile of the typical sucker with a Fannie/Freddie subprime loan who has either bolted or is in foreclosure?

    It would seem that playing the race card requires a presumption that most of the “victims” are…….well……what? Does Barney Frank use the logic that since he and his “affordable housing” pals legislated Fannie/Freddie to serve a specific group of risky borrowers, that it must be that same group that is defaulting.

    So, if there is a race element, what are the root causes? Barney and his “affordable housing” pals, it would seem. (I have lived in the same “affordable housing” since 1972. I am surrounded by housing I can not afford. I know many people who could not afford my house. However, they have found “affordable housing” of their own. For some, a doublewide is not “affordable housing.” Get the picture?)

    Comment by heliotrope — October 7, 2008 @ 11:00 am - October 7, 2008

  7. Good point, heliotrope. How IS it that Barney knows that everyone who got “affordable housing” is of a particular skin color? Is it because he and his fellow “affordable housing” folks were supporting and passing rules that denied said loans to white people?

    Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 7, 2008 @ 12:22 pm - October 7, 2008

  8. When has a Democrat ever resigned from anything????

    Comment by Leah — October 7, 2008 @ 12:34 pm - October 7, 2008

  9. When has a Democrat ever resigned from anything????

    Kwame Kilpatrick did… as part of a plea bargain. Obama thinks Kwame Kilpatrick was an “outstanding” mayor. This bodes well for his Administration, don’ t you think?

    Comment by V the K — October 7, 2008 @ 12:53 pm - October 7, 2008

  10. What a surprise…..Henry Waxman absolutely, positively, refuses to talk about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

    Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 7, 2008 @ 1:18 pm - October 7, 2008

  11. Barney Frank disgusts me. What a fat, greedy pig. It’s sad we can’t have better representation than that.

    Comment by Chitown — October 7, 2008 @ 1:19 pm - October 7, 2008

  12. My favorite comment left by a reader of the Breitbart story (paraphrased):

    “Barney was getting some fanny from Fannie.”

    Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 7, 2008 @ 2:18 pm - October 7, 2008

  13. Barney Frank will die in office. If that man makes it to 112, his people will vote for him, no matter how much he screws up. Liberals are that way.

    Comment by John Smith — October 11, 2008 @ 6:03 am - October 11, 2008

  14. [...] They don’t want to investigate Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac because they might upset their narrative about how deregulation and Wall Street greed prompted the mortgage meltdown.  So, when conservative suggest that government programs might have precipitated the mess, a leading Democrat accuses such heretics to the media narrative of racism. [...]

    Pingback by GayPatriot » What Joe the Plumber Shows Us About the Left — October 18, 2008 @ 5:10 pm - October 18, 2008

  15. [...] Services Committee, for his responsibility for the mortgage meltdown (here, here, here, here and here), he at least acknowledged the need for regulation of the government-supported enterprises (GSEs) [...]

    Pingback by GayPatriot » Chris Dodd Fails to Disclose Dubious Dealings — October 21, 2008 @ 12:59 pm - October 21, 2008

  16. [...] fall, he accused conservatives of racism for linking the financial meltdown to the Community Reinvestment Act and the mismanagement of Fannie Mae and Freddie [...]

    Pingback by GayPatriot » If you disagree with Barney Frank, you’re a bigot! — March 24, 2009 @ 7:18 pm - March 24, 2009

  17. [...] he can, the unhappy Barney Frank attacks his political adversaries, accusing them of blaming black people, hating gays and having psychological disorders. But, so used is this career politician to fawning [...]

    Pingback by GayPatriot » Barney Can Dish it Out, but he Just Can’t Take It — June 11, 2009 @ 3:09 pm - June 11, 2009

  18. [...] have addressed the causes here, here and here, just to link a three of our posts on the matter.  Even Obama-supporting columnist [...]

    Pingback by GayPatriot » Please Identify the Bush-Era Deregulation responsible for the financial meltdown — March 28, 2010 @ 3:32 am - March 28, 2010

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