Posted on 08/18/2010 5:36:58 PM PDT by Kaslin
Housing: After years of dissembling and denial, Rep. Barney Frank has finally come out. He now says bankrupt government mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "should be abolished." Better late than never.
'There were people in this society who for economic and, frankly, social reasons can't and shouldn't be homeowners," Frank said in an interview with the Fox Business Network and sounding a lot more like an elephant than a donkey. "I think we should, particularly, stop this assumption that you put everybody into homeownership."
After years of blaming heartless Republicans and Wall Street for the crisis caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their predominantly Democratic supporters in Congress it's refreshing to hear a member of the Democratic Party admit his mistakes.
It's especially true of Frank, who, more than any other elected official, championed the cause of the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Indeed, Frank is most responsible for stopping GSE reform in the early 2000s, at a time when such a move might have prevented the financial meltdown.
Maybe Frank, like so many others in his party, is feeling the heat in this November's election. Democrats' popularity is plunging after years of economic incompetence that has left America's once-thriving economy a shambles.
But give him his due: Frank's comments mark a major departure.
In 2000, when Rep. Richard Baker proposed more oversight for the GSEs, Frank called concerns about Fannie and Freddie "overblown," claiming there was "no federal liability whatsoever."
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Frank and his boyfriend must go too!
This (Fannie and Freddie) is one of the great success stories of all time.
-Christopher Dodd
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.
-Barney Frank
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.
-Barney Frank
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.
-Barney Frank
Those who argue that housing prices are now at the point of a bubble seem to be missing a very important point. Unlike previous examples, where substantial excessive inflation of prices later caused some problems, we are talking here about an entity, home ownership, homes, where there is not the degree of leverage that we have seen elsewhere.
-Barney Frank
This is not the dot-com situation. You will not see the collapse that you see when people talk about a bubble.
-Barney Frannk
I do think I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision]. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.
-Barney Frank
What happened is this: there are people who do not like affordable housing.
-Barney Frank
I am not entirely sure why we are here.
-Barney Frank
And my worry is that we’re using the recent safety and soundness concerns, particularly with Freddie, and with a poor regulator, as a straw man to curtail Fannie and Freddie’s mission.
-Charles Schumer
Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and in particular at Fannie Mae.
-Maxine Waters
I have sat through nearly a dozen hearings where, frankly, we were trying to fix something that wasn’t broke.
-Maxine Waters
Now that he has robbed it blind he wants to destroy the evidence. He needs to be gone, not to jail, but from this earth. He is a burden on our republic that should not be tolerated.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.