Barney Blames GOP for Crisis he Abetted by Thwarting Reforms they Proposed to Avert It
Imagine how the Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media would have reacted if Republicans had succeeded in blocking the “stimulus” and the economy remained in the doldrums. If the Republicans blamed the majority party for inaction, they would accuse us of hypocrisy while lecturing us on the evils of Republican obstructionism.
Although the “stimulus” passed, it has not worked as advertised, job losses continue to mount to levels far higher than those the Administration had forecast. While the economic picture remains bleak, at least we can take some satisfaction in being proven right.
But, despite his best efforts (with the media covering for him), the unhappy Barney Frank cannot say the same thing about Republican efforts reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. You see, slthough then-President Bush repeatedly called for reform of the two government-sponsored mortgage giants, Democrats succeeded blocking Republican reforms.
And now with a report fingering Frank and others who thwarted such reforms, the mean-spirited man from Massachusetts continues to dodge responsibility and do what he always does when criticized, blame Republicans:
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who comes under some criticism in the GOP report, has said more foreclosures were caused by unregulated entities rather than Fannie and Freddie. He has also noted that Republicans were in control of Congress from 1995 to 2007, when the housing bubble was created.
Yup, the unhappy man is right. Republicans were in control, but he did everything in his power to prevent them from using that control to pass legislation he didn’t like. His obstructionism served a double purpose (1) preventiing Republicans from implementing policies Barney didn’t like and (2) blaming Republicans for their failure if things went south.
Barney just didn’t want to risk having Republican policies succeed.
I’m sure Barney would be singing a different tune if Republicans had blocked the “stimulus.”
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“Imagine how the Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media would have reacted if Republicans had succeeded in blocking the ’stimulus’ and the economy remained in the doldrums… While the economic picture remains bleak, at least we can take some satisfaction in being proven right.”
Now Congressional Democrats want a second stimulus bill. Beware the coming howls of indignation from Democrats when Republicans’ successful efforts to prevent passage of the second bill are blamed for the economy’s continued failure in coming months.
http://www.scottspiegel.com/?p=646
(“If At First You Don’t Succeed, Fail, Fail Again!”)
Comment by Scott Spiegel — July 9, 2009 @ 10:54 am - July 9, 2009
Despite my and others’ numerous efforts to deflate this talking point, you still continue to pretend that Fannie and Freddie caused the mortgage crisis. I know it’s hard to let go of the neat and simple idea that Barney Frank destroyed the economy, but it’s been shown, time and time and time again (and again!), that the CRA and Fannie/Freddie did not cause the mortgage crisis or the economic meltdown. One of my favorite quotes comes from the Federal Reserve Board Chairman:
Maybe that should be expanded to include “or idealogues who don’t like Democrats.”
And since the Republicans *did* control Congress, and got tons of conservative legislation through during their DC reign of error, why couldn’t they fix this, if they truly wanted it to be fixed? One Democrat, in the minority, stopped the GOP legislation machine?
Barney just didn’t want to risk having Republican policies succeed
ROTFL. No fear, given how every other Republican idea and effort of governing has led our nation to the brink of disaster (and beyond the brink, given the response to Katrina).
Comment by torrentprime — July 9, 2009 @ 11:06 am - July 9, 2009
I think Americans are waking up to the Stimulus Scam (call it, the ‘Scamulus’) and realize now it’s not intended to create economic recovery, but to shower money on Demonrat constituents. We now know, for example, that Scamulus Money Is Pouring into Blue Counties at Twice the Rate of Red Counties. We also know the Scamulus was stuffed with payoffs to public employee unions (in the form of aid to states like California and New Jersey where lavish spending on public employees has led to huge deficits), pork projects like John Murtha’s airport-to-nowhere, and a huge pot of money for ACORN and similar groups of race hustling street agitators to apply for.
And now they want a $Trillion more to reward their allies and punish their opponents. It’s the Chicago Way.
Comment by V the K — July 9, 2009 @ 11:11 am - July 9, 2009
Despite my and others’ numerous efforts to deflate this talking point, you still continue to pretend that Fannie and Freddie caused the mortgage crisis.
Torrentprime, don’t you realize that your pathetic attempts to defend Barney Fag are simply unraveled by anyone who knows the truth?
”Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990’s by reducing down payment requirements,” said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae’s chairman and chief executive officer. ”Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.”
Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.
The Bush administration recognized that, which is why they moved to do something about it.
The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.
The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.
Indeed, the Fed was sounding the alarm as well. But:
Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.
”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
Now we see Torrentprime desperately spinning and trying to protect Fag, claiming that Fannie Mae’s problems had nothing to do with the mortgage crisis.
Facts differ.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are so big — they own or guarantee roughly half of the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage market — that the thought that they might falter once seemed unimaginable. But now a trickle of worries about the companies, which has been slowly building for years, has suddenly become a torrent.
Virtually every home mortgage lender, from giants like Citigroup to the smallest local banks, relies on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to grease the wheels of the mortgage market. Virtually every Wall Street bank does business with them. And investors around the world own $5.2 trillion of the debt securities backed by the companies.
Again, this is blatantly obvious to anyone with eyes. But of course, like a good puppet and Obama Party member, torrentprime has to defend Fag. It shows you just how dangerous idiots like torrentprime are, in that they will defend a bumbling fool like Fag whose use of cheap mortgage money to buy off voters who had no chance whatsoever of paying those loans collapsed the US mortgage market — just because Fag is a fellow gay liberal.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — July 9, 2009 @ 11:44 am - July 9, 2009
And here’s an even better example of what the spinning and desperate torrentprime is supporting:
Troubled OneUnited Bank in Boston didn’t look much like a candidate for aid from the Treasury Department’s bank bailout fund last fall.
The Treasury had said it would give money only to healthy banks, to jump-start lending. But OneUnited had seen most of its capital evaporate. Moreover, it was under attack from its regulators for allegations of poor lending practices and executive-pay abuses, including owning a Porsche for its executives’ use.
Nonetheless, in December OneUnited got a $12 million injection from the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. One apparent factor: the intercession of Rep. Barney Frank, the powerful head of the House Financial Services Committee.
Mr. Frank, by his own account, wrote into the TARP bill a provision specifically aimed at helping this particular home-state bank. And later, he acknowledges, he spoke to regulators urging that OneUnited be considered for a cash injection.
And it gets better.
The bank that Rep. Frank of Massachusetts went to bat for, OneUnited, saw its capital level sink in early September after the U.S. took control of the overextended mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. OneUnited, a closely held Boston-based lender with offices in Florida and California too, held large amounts of Fannie Mae preferred shares. Their value plunged after the U.S. put Fannie and Freddie into a federal conservatorship, acquired preferred shares in them and took warrants entitling the government to nearly 80% of their common stock.
The moves left OneUnited’s capital badly depleted. A measure called “Tier 1 risk-based capital” equaled only 1.88% of assets at the bank, versus a desired level of about 6%. A OneUnited lawyer, Robert Cooper, says he called Rep. Frank and Rep. Maxine Waters of California, both Democrats, to complain that the Treasury’s move had hurt the bank.
Rep. Waters heads the House Financial Services subcommittee on housing, and until last spring her husband, Sidney Williams, was a OneUnited director. Rep. Frank, besides heading the Financial Services Committee, has longstanding ties to OneUnited, and recalls having had a deposit account at a predecessor bank in the 1960s.
Later that month, Rep. Frank was intimately involved in crafting the legislation that created the $700 billion financial-system rescue plan. Mr. Frank says that in order to protect OneUnited bank, he inserted into the bill a provision to give special consideration to banks that had less than $1 billion of assets, had been well-capitalized as of June 30, served low- and moderate-income areas, and had taken a capital hit in the federal seizure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
And the ultimate hilarity:
“I did feel that it was important to frankly try and save them since it was federal action that put them into the dumper,” Mr. Frank says.
Of course it was Federal action. It was Fag and his pathetic Obama Party who were demanding that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fund their payoffs to corrupt “housing” organizations like ACORN and force banks to make loans to people who could never pay them back — with the resulting collapse.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — July 9, 2009 @ 11:50 am - July 9, 2009
Tons of conservative legislation? Hardly. Yep, they did get a lot through in the 104th and 105th, but only a sprinkling after that. So, since you call it a “reign of error,” torrent, please specify some of the supposedly erroneous legislation passed by the GOP Congress.
And I didn’t say that Barney alone stopped it; he has assistance in his obstruction. It’s just that given his prominence as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and his readiness to blame Republicans, he’s regularly in the news. Oh, and there’s that thing about the unhappy man refusing to take responsibility for his myriad mistakes.
Finally, since you believe every other Republican effort at governing has led this nation to the brink of disaster, please specify with the particular legislation and the disaster it caused.
As to the response to Katrina, please take into account that local officials are always the first responders and in Louisiana at the time, those officials–at the city and state level–were Democrat. The response may have been slow in New Orleans, but there were fewer complaints (proportionally) in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, all of which lacked Democratic governors.
Comment by GayPatriotWest — July 9, 2009 @ 12:18 pm - July 9, 2009
Anyone who has read Atlas Shrugged should be able to recognize that “Barney Frank” equals “Wesley Mouch”.
Comment by Matteo — July 9, 2009 @ 1:06 pm - July 9, 2009
So much for the spin: Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Report on the Mortgage Problem Concludes that it was largely Congress’s fault.
Comment by V the K — July 9, 2009 @ 1:32 pm - July 9, 2009
Thank you V, I couldn’t find the link.
Comment by The Livewire — July 9, 2009 @ 2:26 pm - July 9, 2009
If we accept your premise, TP, then that must mean that the liberals were doing everything they could to warn the public and stop Republicans, right? Barney Frank must have gone on Bill O’Reilly to tell America that everything is not fine and dandy. Henry Waxman, who loves to spend tax payer money investigating everything that moves immediately launched an investigation into who was responsible, right?
I can’t seem to find any evidence of that. Please help us out.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — July 9, 2009 @ 3:23 pm - July 9, 2009
I love the way Torrent Prime supposedly cites one “source” to back up his ignorant assertions regarding Barney Frank. Then NDT and others kick his political “bum” into next week with numerous sources of information regarding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I got one more. Ron Paul submitted a report to Mr. Frank’s committee in 2003 about FM and FM stating the obvious. Humm, I remember Mr. Rahm was at one of the FM’s around that time. Mr. Frank and the majority of his Democrat friends blocked any action on the suggestions made by Mr. Paul about “regulation” of these two loser GSE’s. Now, they are all calling for regulation that they blocked during the previous Presidency. Torrent Prime…wake up Dude!!!
Comment by Duffy - Native Intelligence — July 9, 2009 @ 4:25 pm - July 9, 2009
Hey, Torrent Prime, read Thomas Sowell`s Housing Boom and Bust.
North Dallas Thirty, loved your smackdown!
Comment by JRD — July 9, 2009 @ 9:38 pm - July 9, 2009
Hmm, no snappy comeback from tp?
Must have redeployed over the horizion.
Comment by The Livewire — July 10, 2009 @ 7:29 am - July 10, 2009
Read the column by Bill Sammon dated Oct 3 2008
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,432501,00.html
“WASHINGTON — Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s.
So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.
Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank’s relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie.”
Even Bill Clinton credits the Democrats with the bust
“Although Frank now blames Republicans for the failure of Fannie and Freddie, he spent years blocking GOP lawmakers from imposing tougher regulations on the mortgage giants. In 1991, the year Moses was hired by Fannie, the Boston Globe reported that Frank pushed the agency to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively.
Three years later, President Clinton’s Department of Housing and Urban Development tried to impose a new regulation on Fannie, but was thwarted by Frank. Clinton now blames such Democrats for planting the seeds of today’s economic crisis.
“I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” Clinton said recently.”
Comment by The Old Man — July 10, 2009 @ 12:13 pm - July 10, 2009
Sorry, I forgot to include the relationship of Frank and Moses.
“Frank met Moses in 1987, the same year he became the first openly gay member of Congress.
“I am the only member of the congressional gay spouse caucus,” Moses wrote in the Washington Post in 1991. “On Capitol Hill, Barney always introduces me as his lover.”
The two lived together in a Washington home until they broke up in 1998, a few months after Moses ended his seven-year tenure at Fannie Mae, where he was the assistant director of product initiatives. According to National Mortgage News, Moses “helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs.”
Critics say such programs led to the mortgage meltdown that prompted last month’s government takeover of Fannie Mae and its financial cousin, Freddie Mac. The giant firms are blamed for spreading bad mortgages throughout the private financial sector.”
Comment by The Old Man — July 10, 2009 @ 12:22 pm - July 10, 2009