Barney Frank has a set of balls as big as a Mack truck

Barney Frank, the congressman from Massachusetts and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee was on Greta Van Susteren's TV show tonight talking about how the lack of appropriate regulation led to the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But this son of a bitch was telling everyone that there was no fire beneath all the Fannie and Freddie smoke FIVE YEARS AGO when a piece of regulatory legislation came before his committee!

Check out this clip (at the 4:40 mark):

Here's what he said:

I want to begin by saying that I am glad to consider the legislation, but I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two government sponsored enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. We have recently had an accounting problem with Freddie Mac that has led to people being dismissed, as appears to be appropriate. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury.

I must say we have an interesting example of self-fulfilling prophecy. Some of the critics of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say that the problem is that the Federal Government is obligated to bail out people who might lose money in connection with them. I do not believe that we have any such obligation. And as I said, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy by some people.

So let me make it clear, I am a strong supporter of the role that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play in housing, but nobody who invests in them should come looking to me for a nickel--nor anybody else in the Federal Government. And if investors take some comfort and want to lend them a little money and less interest rates, because they like this set of affiliations, good, because housing will benefit. But there is no guarantee, there is no explicit guarantee, there is no implicit guarantee, there is no wink-and-nod guarantee. Invest, and you are on your own.

Now, we have got a system that I think has worked very well to help housing. The high cost of housing is one of the great social bombs of this country. I would rank it second to the inadequacy of our health delivery system as a problem that afflicts many, many Americans. We have gotten recent reports about the difficulty here.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have played a very useful role in helping make housing more affordable, both in general through leveraging the mortgage market, and in particular, they have a mission that this Congress has given them in return for some of the arrangements which are of some benefit to them to focus on affordable housing, and that is what I am concerned about here. I believe that we, as the Federal Government, have probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing and to set reasonable goals. I worry frankly that there is a tension here.

The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disastrous scenarios. And even if there were a problem, the Federal Government doesn't bail them out. But the more pressure there is there, then the less I think we see in terms of affordable housing.

This idiot was proven 100% wrong. Not only were these two behemoth institutions at risk but we the taxpayers are going to foot the bill which he said we would not have to. Now he's going around on all the talk shows trying to cover up his complicity. Of course he's been a big recipient of Fannie/Freddie campaign contributions over the years.

The people of Massachusetts 4th district should vote this bum out office and vote for Earl Sholley.

H/T: The Tax Foundation

Posted by Henry Louis Gomez at September 24, 2008 10:40 PM

Comments

Posted by: George L. Moneo at September 24, 2008 11:09 PM

Posted by: asombra at September 25, 2008 01:34 PM

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