Barney Frank predicts economic uptick by fall (Still no investigation of the Banking Queen)

Wicked Local ^ | 2/20/09 | Joe Markman

[Libloather]

Barney Frank predicts economic uptick by fall
By Joe Markman
Fri Feb 20, 2009, 02:48 PM EST

SCITUATE - The economy should see positive effects of the president’s stimulus package by the fall, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Newton, told a town hall-style meeting Thursday night.

In a discussion of the national economy at Scituate High School, Frank compared the stimulus package that President Obama signed into law Tuesday to the New Deal. Frank also said Obama’s $75 billion mortgage relief plan will improve the economic situation by the fall.

Speaking in a packed auditorium, Frank talked about financial regulation, limiting home foreclosures and curbing executive pay for companies that receive government bailout money.

In addition to helping homeowners facing foreclosure, Frank said he supports allowing those who are not in jeopardy of losing their homes to seek lower interest rates.

“You can get a substantial savings,” he said. “That will help people with their homes and also put back money into the economy.”

Frank said the government should turn away from a policy of non-regulation espoused by Republicans and return to regulating the financial industry.

“The average American is justifiably angry at the way the American economy has worked,” he said. “For the free enterprise system to work well, the public sector has to do its part.”

For the better part of three decades, Republicans followed Ronald Reagan’s mantra that “government is the problem,” Frank said, until last fall, when Bush sent advisers up and down Wall Street saying, “We are from the government and we are here to help you.”

Written into the stimulus package is a provision that allows companies who have received bailout money to return it so that they can avoid executive pay limits. Frank said no companies have come forward with a refund.

[Libloather]

“The average American is justifiably angry at the way the American economy has worked,” he said.

People get angry when a certain unqualified representative sleeps with the Fannie Mae CEO.

[Doogle]

he’s familiar with ticks

[Oldeconomybuyer]

For the free enterprise system to work well, the public sector has to do its part.”

And you are GUILTY of gross negligence, Mr. Fwanks.

[Reagan Man]

>>>>>... Frank compared the stimulus package that President Obama signed into law Tuesday to the New Deal.

Hey Barney, the New Deal was a failure, ya dope!

[DonaldC]

I wonder what he think would drive the uptick?

[bert]

The Queeah should be stood against a wall Ceausescu like

[muawiyah]

Amazingly Barney Frank appears totally unaware that he's part of the government and part of the problem.

Or maybe that's not amazing at all ~ Dissociative Identity Disorder has that characteristic.

[LostInBayport]

“The average American is justifiably angry at the way the American economy has worked,” he said. “For the free enterprise system to work well, the public sector has to do its part.”

WRONG. The average American is justifiably angry at the way the U.S. Congress has meddled with the American economy and continues to meddle and drag us into a depression. The public sector needs to get the hell out of the way.

And Bawney Fwank should be in prison. A prison for women.

[InvisibleChurch]

yeah, it’s called Christmas shopping

[Tarpon]

Well since Barney's Fwank said it, don't you think it's true?

Today Odummer was predicting doom and gloom again. So who you gonna believe. And isn't the real question who has one shred of credibility. The guy who caused the problem, or the guy who made it worse. Does anyone seriously think porkulus is going to do anything but stimulate government and Democrat activists?

Personally, I don't believe a damn thing any of these creeps have to say about anything. Do you?

[verity]

I have a preference for hanging him and his ilk from lamp posts.;-)

[ETL]

______________________________________________________________

Media Mum on Barney Frank's Fannie Mae Love Connection:
Democratic House Financial Services Committee Chair promoted GSEs while former 'spouse' was Fannie Mae executive

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute, 9/24/2008

excerpt...

"Frank, who is openly gay, had a relationship with Herb Moses, an executive for the now-government controlled Fannie Mae. The column revealed the two had split up at the time but also said Frank was referring to Moses as his "spouse." Another Washington Post report said Frank called Moses his "lover" and that the two were "still friends" after the breakup.

Frank was and remains a stalwart defender of Fannie Mae, which is now under FBI investigation along with its sister organization Freddie Mac, American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AIG) and Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH) – all recently participants in government bailouts. But Frank has derailed efforts to regulate the institution, as well as denying it posed any financial risk."

http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/2008/20080924145932.aspx

___________________________________________________________

Lawmaker Accused of Fannie Mae Conflict of Interest

October 03, 2008
By Bill Sammon

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.

Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest. Critics, however, remain skeptical.

"It’s absolutely a conflict," said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute. "He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane?

"If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have - or at least what’s not in the stock market - that this would be considered germane," added Gainor, a T. Boone Pickens Fellow. "But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard."

A top GOP House aide agreed.

"C’mon, he writes housing and banking laws and his boyfriend is a top exec at a firm that stands to gain from those laws?" the aide told FOX News. "No media ever takes note? Imagine what would happen if Frank’s political affiliation was R instead of D? Imagine what the media would say if [GOP former] Chairman [Mike] Oxley’s wife or [GOP presidential nominee John] McCain’s wife was a top exec at Fannie for a decade while they wrote the nation’s housing and banking laws."

Frank’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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.

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.

Bill Sammon is FOX News' Washington Deputy Managing Editor.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,432501,00.html

______________________________________________________________

Must see video from 2004: 'Democrats Defend Fannie/Freddie from Regulation'. Watch it 'til the end. You will not believe it.

"We've been through nearly a dozen hearings where frankly we were trying to fix something that wasn't broke. Mr. Chairman we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and in particular at Fannie Mae under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines."-Rep. Maxine Waters, 2004

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL36nwCSYUM

___________________________________________________________

History of Fannie Mae scandal
"Fannie Mae announces its long-awaited restatement, erasing $6.3 billion in profit from 2001 through June 30, 2004."
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/12/07/history_of_fannie_mae_scandal/?page=1

[Candor7]

[Libloather]

Please add this one to your collage -

[roamer_1]

the Banking Queen

Ok, somebody's gotta do a spoof on Abba's "Dancing Queen"...

[LuigiBasco]

I’m pretty sure the headline was supposed to be UPDICK!

[Texas Fossil]

NOT going to happen Barney, Atlas is about to Shrug.

Then the shoe will drop.

[Libloather]

Ok, somebody's gotta do a spoof on Abba's "Dancing Queen"...

Too late. I pinched the name from ElRushbo. And Rush's song version busts a gut!

[RckyRaCoCo]

that’s a mouthful

[ETL]

Ok, somebody's gotta do a spoof on Abba's "Dancing Queen"...

Limbaugh did months ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwVWXN0Pyq4