A reminder as to who is actually behind the mess we are in. Curiously you never see or hear this stuff anywhere and only occasionally on FOX.
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VOTE ALL INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE.
(Small print–unless “for REAL” your folks are doing a good job. Not a good job evidenced by you don’t know any thing bad. Evidenced by the pols have actually done something really good==like published the sources of all their contributions, all their pork bills, all their tax returns and investments, etc.)
Fusion–its attitudes like yours that has given us the Congress we have. Someone is “not responsible” because someone else was more responsible or whatever. Even as Barney sat as a minority member of the committee==he could have spoken out on the record and if not there then in the press. On the occasion of BushCo requesting a transition of oversight to a more lax system he said “There was nothing wrong, no crises.” Then a few years later, he applies pressure for Freddie to guarantee sub prime loans.
YOU are taking a “criminal” approach to responsibility===personal actions with proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That is the wrong standard. These are politicians. They are responsible for whatever happens UNLESS they clearly were taking steps to avoid it. YOUR standard gives us what we have. My standard can only be wished for as the majority are against it.
#103 – Bobo
My my my, you certainly have your panties in a twist over Mr. Frank.
After the Repugs’ claim that he gummed up the works when Dumbya tried to “enact new legislation” is knocked into a cocked hat (turns out what he was gumming up was a complete hand-over of the mortgage industry to Dumbya’s shills), now you want to roast him because he “didn’t do enough”.
It’s one thing to encourage banks to lend to people with less money, or to minorities. That does NOT mean throw a sucker mortgage at everyone walking in the door without a pot to piss in. I know plenty of individuals of modest means, and minorities, who live in houses they can afford, pay their mortgages on time, and everyone goes home happy. THOSE were the kind of people that were supposed to get more mortgages.
And the highly paid bankers were supposed to earn some of their high pay by separating the wheat from the chaff. A couple making $40,000/year with a decent credit history, good job history and a stable home comes in looking to buy a $70,000 home: MORTGAGE. A couple comes in with 5 marriages and 11 jobs over the past 5 years between them comes in looking for a no-down-payment ARM on an $700,000 home: NO MORTGAGE.
That’s not what they did, though. With the derivatives and the collateralized debt obligations and the default credit swaps, bankers had no vested interest in writing a “successful” mortgage beyond the time they split them out, bundled them up, and sold them off to somebody else to worry about. If the homeowners defaulted on the ARM, tfb. That was somebody else’s problem. And now it’s our problem.
You can’t stick that one on Bubble Butt Barney.
Mustard–I agree the mortgage packaging and leveraging was mostly a Repuglican move having nothing to do with Barney. Still, to a “some” degree, what the Repugs packaged and leveraged was the subprime mortgages that Barney was responsible for “to some degree.”
Your other post quite cleverly, humorously, and rightly argued that what you were used to were people saving for years to get the 20% down payment on a house. What Barney did was arrange mortgages so that people with no money could get a 20% cash back on closing.
See the difference?
Bobbo,
Please don’t pull a Cow-Paddy here. You brought up the “crises” bull, so what was this “crises” that Barney Frank ignored?
I’m not sure how many times you need to be asked but it is a relevant question and YOU brought it up. This is the third request. Please quit pussy footing around and explain why Frank ignored a crises (when none was evident), or was responsible because the oversight wasn’t there, or the Administration officials lied to the Congress.
It should be noted that Barney Frank was a minority party member of the House Financial Services Committee until January of 2007, and only at which time did he became chairman. Weren’t the horses out of the barn by 2007? It seems to me that no matter how much we want to vilify Frank, we should at least give a dishonorable mention to the person who chaired that important committee from 2001 through the end of 2006. If the name Michael G. Oxley (R-OH) seems a little unfamiliar, perhaps the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 will ring a bell.
Since leaving Congress at the end of 2006, Oxley has been spending time with his family. Nah — I’m kidding, of course, unless his family is the Washington lobbying firm of Baker & Hostetler, where Oxley’s client list includes the National Association of Home Builders. Over the years, they’ve certainly come to think of Oxley as family.
Fusion– keep track==Barney is responsible for his failure to call for if not implement tighter loan guarantee standards for the Freddies. We already went thru that. You want to give him a pass because he was a minority committee member. I don’t.
What a surprise – Drama Queen Mustard not only taking up for Barney Frank, but is insulted that any one would blame him for his misdeeds.
Oh I see! Queen Mustard you devil – got a thing for Barney do you? That certainly explains why you are always cranky and frustrated. You just miss your porky pal.
#108, bobbo,
We already went thru that.
No we haven’t. What was this effen crises that Frank ignored? Where were the bad accounts that Frank should have seen that would have required a change in regulatory authority?
You criticized him because he didn’t do anything (or enough in your book) to halt something that was not happening. Please, allow me to rephrase the question.
What evidence was there that Fanny and Freddie required direct oversight by the Treasury Department?
#109 – ‘tempt
With your content-free posting, I’m half-tempted (oooh get it? tempted??) to accuse you of being ‘dro in disguise.
However, that wouldn’t be fair to ‘dro. He occasionally says something that makes sense. And as far as I know, he’s not a bald-faced lying sack of shit, making things up from whole cloth to support asinine ideas you THINK should be so, even if they’re not.
Tsk tsk. At first, you were bittersweet, with your courageous attempt to make a Brittney-like comeback from your disgrace.
Now you’re just a steamy, stinking pile of shit.
#107 – GTDI
>>If the name Michael G. Oxley (R-OH) seems a
>>little unfamiliar, perhaps the Sarbanes-
>>Oxley Act of 2002 will ring a bell.
Oh, it’s not unfamiliar to me at all. I’m well aware of Oxley’s role in sponsoring the notorious Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, one of the biggest impediments to small- and medium-sized businesses since they invented taxation. Sarbanes-Oxley has been responsible for more expense, lost jobs, closed businesses, and economic heartache than just about any other single piece of legislation ever devised.
And the bitter irony in all that is SarbOx was supposed to PREVENT the kind of wailing and gnashing of teeth tha followed the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, etc.
Mission Accomplished??
#110 Drama Queen Mustard
Hey Queen Mustard, when you and Barney get together are you the train or the tunnel?
As for here you are the steamy, stinking pile of shit.
#111–Fusion==ok. I think I see the confusion. I keep saying Barney is responsible to some degree for the CURRENT SUBPRIME MORTGAGE CRISES. You keep countering with prove he ignored the crises.
What Barney ignored is the requirement of oversight his committee was charged with exercising over the Freddies and the general financial institutions. Failure to exercise that authority resulted in the crises that we have today.
I can see the word game at play here, but not the substance of your position.
Isn’t Congress RESPONSIBLE to make sure society and its institutions (including the Freddies) don’t create a financial meltdown? Or are they only responsible to get themselves re-elected and not pass gun control laws and healthcare access laws?
#113 – ‘tempt
>>As for here you are the steamy, stinking
>>pile of shit.
Jumpin’ Jehosophat! Is that like “I’m rubber, you’re glue”???
You seem to enjoy being bitch slapped. That’s a little kinky, isn’t it? I thought you Repubs kept that stuff inside the stall.
In any case, it’s a lot safer than trying to make actual comments containing actual facts; you just never know when someone will call your bluff and you will be revealed, yet again, as a Pinocchio-nose.
I don’t know how many more bouts of that sort of public humiliation you’ve got left in ya.
Pace yourself.
#114 – Bobo
>>What Barney ignored is the requirement of
>>oversight his committee was charged with
>>exercising over
What you remain in denial of, Bobo, is that (as GTDI points out) a little over a year ago Barney Frank was nothing more than the ranking MINORITY committee member of the House Financial Services Committe. And a year before that, the Congress was Repuglican controlled.
He WAS key in blocking Dumbya’s attempt to give the chickenhouse over to the foxes. And in 2002, there WAS no crisis. Dumbya’s friends and contributers were all claiming that everything was hunkey dory.
So OK. Barney Frank did not, single-handedly, stave off the housing crisis, the recession, the war in Iraq, cure cancer, and prevent Windows BSODs.
But to blame him, in large part, for the burning bag of dog shit that the Repugs have laid at our door? WTF? Are you daft?
#113 Drama Queen Mustard
>>…make actual comments containing actual facts
You are a fine example considering if a story doesn’t contain the facts you require you just make up your own.
Not sure who you think you are fooling, maybe yourself, but the only person’s credibility in question is yours.
#117–contempt==stop wasting our time with your puerile attempts at insult. You’ve got a blocked colon and your eyes are turning brown.
#116–Mustard & Fusion:
Wasn’t Barney in charge in 1999 when he PERSONALLY kicked off the chain of events that would lead us here, or if not directly “here” some other financial meltdown? (Hint==yes.):
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9c0de7db153ef933a0575ac0a96f958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
If minority party members are not responsible for anything when in such status, then they should be sent home to allow for more parking. He said nothing during the 8 year run up to the actual meltdown. HE HAS RESPONSIBILITY. No need to quibble about how much, but to say “none” is insane.
#117 – ‘tempt
>>You are a fine example considering if a
>>story doesn’t contain the facts you require
>>you just make up your own.
Heh heh. Heh heh heh. Care to provide an example or two? Or is this like the 9725 votes in a 9532-voter county in the Minnesota senate race? Like all those small businesses that are shutting down pre-emptively in fear of Obama’s oppressive tax plan? Tee hee!
I really hope you live on the west coast. Otherwise, it’s waaaaaaaaaay past your bed time.
Time to go night-night, son.
#118, bobbo,
The Republicans controlled the House from 1994 until 2006. In 1999 Henry Hide was still Speaker of the House and most of the year was distracted by the Clinton and Monica brouhaha.
The minority party still represents their district and the ranking member (and I’m not sure if that was Frank in 1999) gets to lead the minority party in committee.
Your link means nothing as it does not mention that either party was pushing the “toxic paper” on Fannie and Freddie.
Wasn’t Barney in charge in 1999 when he PERSONALLY kicked off the chain of events that would lead us here, or if not directly “here” some other financial meltdown? (Hint==yes.):
You haven’t answered the question. What evidence was there that Fannie and Freddy required new oversight by Treasury?
You accuse Frank of being responsible but haven’t told us how or why. You did post an irrelevant link that shows Fannie and Freddie giving Government subsidized mortgages to qualified low income buyers. And you haven’t refuted my claim that the Administration and financial institutions mislead Congress.
Bobbo, you are doing exactly what Cow-Paddy and ‘tempt are famous for. Making stupid claims then going down some other road when called on it.
Fusion–my router is acting up not letting me surf easily back to what I posted. From memory it clearly says Congress put pressure on lenders to issue loans to previously unqualified people and Freddie was authorized to insure those loans.
Its irrelevant what other posters you think I sound like. Please stop that bit of ad hominem.
You constantly refer to what people “did not do” at some other time and you continue to ignore what they did do (mostly by failure to act) at other points in time. So==the loan made in 2000 by pressure from Frankophiles was a bad loan but was not “toxic” until the same or similar loans where bundled up, securitized, debtswaped, and insured?
I accept reasonable people can disagree on specifics and that the vagaries of communication can make two parties speaking to the same point difficult at times.
Nonetheless, please answer this simple question: What is the job of Congress except to prevent the meltdown we have just experienced? If you say this is not the job of Congress then it would follow that Frank is not responsible. If Congress Is responsible, hard to see how he avoids his share.
It is indeed simple.
go long SDS
For you, Fusion and Mustard,
This has been one very entertaining thread!
All the mud-slinging, name calling, innuendo, and outright blind posturing has been a real hoot!
It’s better than watching “One Life To Live”!
Drama Queens…
Ok, just to kick you two while you’re down, Barney Frank (the big Democratic Purple Dinosaur) may not have been entirely or even largely to blame for the meltdown.
But he was, at the very least, incompetent in every way imaginable.
After all, he was the RANKING COMMITTEE MEMBER OF THE HOUSE FINANCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE!
It doesn’t matter, not one bit, if his party was in the majority or minority. HE WAS THE RANKING COMMITTEE MEMBER!
What this means, Fusion and Mustard (not that you’ll get it, obviously) is that he had the responsibility to oversee “the entire financial services industry, including the securities, insurance, banking, and housing industries.”
Barney Frank, at the very least was entirely incompetent in this.
“”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.”
BUT… “The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.
”There is a general recognition that the supervisory system for housing-related government-sponsored enterprises neither has the tools, nor the stature, to deal effectively with the current size, complexity and importance of these enterprises,” Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told the House Financial Services Committee.”
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
So yes, Barney and his like-minded Dems are in large part responsible for this mess, given that he and his like-minded idiots fought against the Bush legislation which would have avoided this mess.
In other words, Barney was entirely incompetent in his job, yet fought to keep it at the expense of every man, woman, and child in the United States.
Just to kick you again while your down,
“Fannie Mae, which was previously known as the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie Mac, which was the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, have been criticized by rivals for exerting too much influence over their regulators.
”The regulator (Barney Frank and company) has not only been outmanned, it has been outlobbied,” said Representative Richard H. Baker, the Louisiana Republican who has proposed legislation similar to the administration proposal and who leads a subcommittee that oversees the companies. ”Being underfunded does not explain how a glowing report of Freddie’s operations was released only hours before the managerial upheaval that followed. This is not world-class regulatory work.””
Ok, awaiting your shrill response…
Ah_Yea
>>RANKING COMMITTEE MEMBEROF THE HOUSE
>>FINANCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE! HE WAS THE
>>RANKING COMMITTEE MEMBER!
You forgot the “minority” part, Einstein.
Like I said, you can’t read.
“It doesn’t matter, not one bit, if his party was in the majority or minority. HE WAS THE RANKING COMMITTEE MEMBER!” See above.
Shrill….
Ah_Yea, in case Mister Mustard was a little too subtle, the “Minority” portion of Frank’s previous title implies that whatever his level of oversight incompetence may have been, there were other people charged with the same oversight responsibility who had even more power (and committee votes) to perform that same function. In any effort to be fair, the failure weighs no less heavy on their shoulders just because Frank happens to make a good punching bag.
It’s amazing how he was able to impose his will on that committee even though he didn’t become the ranking minority member until 2003, and didn’t become chairman until the Democrats gained a majority in 2007. As I understand it, Frank must have been able to successfully outplay all 37 of the Republican committee members (it’s a very large committee), all of whom stood for truth, justice, and the American way. I hope we someday learn how he managed to do it.
And the lesson John?
If you want lots of angst & denial, attack a liberal for doing a bad job, deservedly.
#129 Paddy-O, I suppose that’s fair. I can cop to my share of angst and denial. Like blame, there’s plenty to go around. However, injecting an occasional note of reality regarding the timeline of power is important when you have village idiots like bobbo saying, as he did in #118:
“Wasn’t Barney in charge in 1999 when he PERSONALLY kicked off the chain of events that would lead us here, or if not directly “here” some other financial meltdown? (Hint==yes.)”
Ah Yea,
You are a lieing sack of Cow-Paddy excetement !!!
Your quote from #124
”The regulator (Barney Frank and company) has not only been outmanned, it has been outlobbied,”
the actual quote
”The regulator has not only been outmanned, it has been outlobbied,”
Notice the difference? Barney Frank and for that matter any member of Congress is NOT, I’ll repeat that, NOT a regulator. The current regulator is the “Federal Housing Finance Agency”, which took over and assumed the regulatory responsibilities of several other agencies including “Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight”
To make a small mistake is acceptable and quite understandable. This, however, was a deliberate attempt to mislead because you went out of your way to insert a name into the quote that had not even appeared in the entire article!!!
RE: post # 131,
Geeze, I can’t even spell shit this morning.
That should have been:
“You are a lieing sack of Cow-Paddy excretement !!!”
I apologize to Ah Yea for getting that wrong. I understand how when you are such a lieing sack of excretement you would prefer that people got it right.
I was gonna comment but it looks like you folks all have zero to do during your day and already got there before me.
Blaming Barney Frank is like blaming the state for not protecting a kid who gets killed by their parent. Useful for demagogues, but not useful for actually fixing the problem. He may have been involved in lax oversight, but it was the private mortgage people who originated loans (not CRA-covered banks) to people who the KNEW couldn’t pay them back, then sliced and diced them into a spam-like product so you couldn’t know that they were made of crap.
A lot of Republicans got very rich on the bubble, and none of them are looking for ways to help the country out of the mess they created.