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A growing number of community banks that got federal bailouts are failing to pay quarterly dividends they owe to the government, including two banks that got aid after congressional intervention on their behalf, according to data released Monday by the Treasury Department. Fifty-five banks failed to make dividend payments in November, a 67 percent jump over the number of delinquent banks three months earlier. Fifteen banks failed to make the required payments in May, federal data show. The number climbed to 33 banks in August, and 55 banks failed to make the dividend payments due Nov. 17. Many smaller banks...

WASHINGTON - The House passed the most ambitious restructuring of federal financial regulations since the New Deal on Friday, aiming to head off any replay of last year's Wall Street failures that plunged the nation deep into recession. The sprawling legislation would give the government new powers to break up companies that threaten the economy, create a new agency to oversee consumer banking transactions and shine a light into shadow financial markets that have escaped the oversight of regulators. The vote was a party-line 223-202. No Republicans voted for the bill; 27 Democrats voted against it. While a victory for...

Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters nationwide say they’re at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. That figure includes 46% who are Very Angry. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 27% are not angry about the government's policies, including 10% who are Not at All Angry........ The data suggests that the level of anger is growing. The 71% who are angry at federal government policies today is up five percentage points since September. Even more stunning, the 46% who are Very Angry is up 10 percentage points from September.

As he appeared before the House Financial Services Committee Tuesday to discuss the slow progress of government efforts to force lenders to ease payment terms on home mortgages, Anthony B. Sanders was reminded of the movie “Jurassic Park.” It might be possible to bring dinosaurs back to life, but does that make it a good idea? Similarly, says Dr. Sanders, a professor of finance at George Mason University, it might be possible to slash interest rates on millions of loans, but that doesn’t mean we should. What if the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program somehow finally gains traction and manages...

Frank’s trademark flashes of anger and impatience have gained a new prominence in the past year as Frank himself has grown in importance. But now financial lobbyists — Democrats and Republicans — say privately that Frank’s actions on regulatory reform have grown as volatile as his moods.

Rep. Barney Frank and Sarah Palin at the winter Gridiron Club dinner. (photo by Lynn Sweet)

...Palin shared the bill at the black-tie dinner of the 124-year old club with Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). She was joined by her husband, Todd Palin, and her parents. Palin -- a potential 2012 presidential candidate -- is touring the nation promoting her memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life. Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, just published a biography titled Barney Frank: The Story of America's Only Left-Handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman. At the reception, Palin mingled and posed for pictures. She told me, when I asked, that her purse was made from otter. Todd Palin explained to...

Sarah Palin may have some ‘splainin’ to do with the conservative fans on her book tour as word spreads of her partying Saturday night with the elites of the dread Mainstream Media. In her featured “roast,” the media types even got off easier than her former associates on the McCain campaign. Sometimes you’ve got “to trust your instincts,” she told the group. “And when you don’t, you end up in a place like this.” The former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate stopped in Washington to be the Republican speaker at the annual black-tie winter dinner of the Gridiron Club,...

"Thanks to Sarah Palin and Barney Frank, it looks like we'll have the biggest turnout in many years," Gridiron secretary Carl Leubsdorf told FBDC. They expect about 190 guests.

Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) is expected to endorse Joe "In The Navy" Sestak, Monday, in his bid to unseat fellow Democrat Arlen Specter as senator from Pennsylvania, according to The Hill.

... In its efforts to prop up a shattered housing market, the government is greatly extending its traditional support of real estate, including guaranteeing the mortgages of middle-class and even upper-class buyers against default. In 2007, the government did not insure a single mortgage in [San Francisco], one of the most expensive in the country. Buyers here, as well as in Manhattan, Santa Monica and every other wealthy area, were presumed to be able to handle the steep prices and correspondingly hefty down payments on their own. Now the government is guaranteeing an average of six mortgages a week here....

Losses of $400 billion are increasingly possible. "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."—Representative Barney Frank, September 25, 2003It was six years ago that Mr. Frank announced his famous dice roll on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the name of affordable housing. Mr. Frank got his wish, and the losses keep rolling in, with no end...

BOSTON (FOX25, myfoxboston) - FOX25 has learned that Congressman Barney Frank was present during a marijuana arrest at James Ready's home in Ogunquit, Maine. Ready is well-known for his relationship with Congressman Frank. According to a police report, police charged Ready with marijuana possession, cultivation and use of drug paraphernalia in August of 2007. Ready admitted to civil possession and paid a fine. The remaining charges were dismissed in 2008. Sources tell FOX25 that when Frank was questioned he told police that he did not live in the house and that he only smoked cigars.

U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski has Wall Street in a tizzy. Mr. Kanjorski, who is chairman of a key House Financial Services subcommittee, is proposing to let the federal government break up large financial institutions if they get so big their demise could threaten the nation's financial system. Mr. Kanjorski, D-11, Nanticoke, wants the government to have that power even if institutions are financially healthy. He plans to introduce legislation next week outlining his plans for new regulation of financial industry firms deemed "too big to fail" because failure could damage the nation's economy. Congress is considering a major overhaul...

Here is video of Democrat Rep. Barney Frank on MSNBC with Ed Schultz where he got angry with Schultz's attitude toward him and told him, "Ed, don't condescend to me." Ed Schultz told Frank that he should just admit that the Congress was wrong to give bailout money to many Wall Street firms, who now are giving out large bonuses. The exchange happened at the beginning of the video. Barney Frank tried to put it off on "the Republicans," and later Ed Schultz told Frank "you can talk about 06, 05 and everything else" but now you have "the White...

Disclaimer: we're talking politics here, not personal stuff . . . If there's a bigger sourpuss in Congress than Barney Frank, I wouldn't want to meet him. On MSNBC this evening, the dyspeptic Member from Massachusetts got into it with, of all people, Ed Schultz. You might think the two libs would make beautiful progressive music together, but what made this spat especially entertaining was that Barney found himself being attacked . . . from the left. The topic was the billions in bonuses awarded by Wall Street firms that had received TARP money. Schultz's beef was that Congress blew...

Fannie Mae has announced that it is going to become a landlord. To avoid foreclosing, Fannie will allow some homeowners to rent. It’s another gamble with our money. Just 6 years ago, Barney Frank said this about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: 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. Oops, this year Congress bailed them out with 100 billion of your tax dollars. And congress has promised Fannie and Freddie ... another $300 billion in guarantees. Will the...

A Boston TV station discovered that Barney Frank was present in 2007 when police raided his boyfriend's home in Maine and confiscated marijuana, bongs and marijuana plants. Somehow this didn't come out until now. In the TV interview below, Frank professes ignorance of the contents of his boyfriend's house--he was on the porch when the police arrived!--and says he wouldn't recognize a marijuana plant if he saw one. It's a wonderful image, really: the boyfriend has these weird, spiky house plants scattered around the premises and Barney thinks they're ferns or something. And he didn't recognize the bags of marijuana,...

What are the odds that had a GOP Congressman had been witness to the arrest of his gay lover's marijuana arrest, minor details like this would take two years to come to the surface? Fox reporter Alison Bologna interviews Frank on the details of the arrest and questions what Frank knew and what he seems conveniently oblivious to as well. Frank as usual goes on the offense with feigned outrage: See her interview and report at the link.

Romney, Huckabee, and Pawlenty must be thrilled. Gridiron Club President Dick Cooper told club members earlier this afternoon that Palin accepted an invitation to speak at the black-tie affair, according to a member of the club’s executive committee. Meg Stapleton, a spokeswoman for Palin, confirmed that Palin planned to address the dinner in an e-mail to POLITICO: “The Governor was honored to accept the invitation.” Also speaking at the dinner will be Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), whom the club invited to represent his party at the event. The dinner’s December 5th, which makes this even more of a no-brainer than...

I just saw a crawler on Fox that Barney Frank was in a home during a drug bust made on his "partner" in 2007. Am I hallucinating? Where is that in the news?

BOSTON (FOX25, myfoxboston) - FOX25 has learned that Congressman Barney Frank was present during a marijuana arrest at James Ready's home in Ogunquit, Maine. Ready is well-known for his relationship with Congressman Frank. According to a police report, police charged Ready with marijuana possession, cultivation and use of drug paraphernalia in August of 2007. Ready admitted to civil possession and paid a fine. The remaining charges were dismissed in 2008. Sources tell FOX25 that when Frank was questioned he told police that he did not live in the house and that he only smoked cigars. Congressman Frank tells FOX25 that...

A Less Than Opaque Look At Mel Watt's Motivations To Kill The "Audit The Fed" Bill /snip The Tom Woods' congressional testimony last week Friday in favor of the 'Audit the Fed' bill had two very curious turns, he set off extremely hostile questioning from two congressmen, by the hearings Committee Chair Barney Frank and Representative Mel Watt. Every other Congressman that questioned Woods, and Fed General Counsel Alvarez, was seemingly concerned about where the money the Fed is printing is actually going. But not Frank and Watt. I discussed Frank's hostility, here. Watt was even more hostile. It looked...

The lies exposed.

Recently at a town hall meeting, Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass) was in rare form. He normally is snide and arrogant, but that day he was downright abusive. He will no doubt say he was being reactionary, cashing in on the convenient excuse that apparently every town hall grouping is full of nothing but angry mobs carrying torches and pitchforks. He asked someone what planet they were from when they asked him questions about the health care bill. He was not only condescending, he was utterly full of contempt for the audience. I saw the video clips, and I think he...

Besides giving advice on avoiding taxes and fraudulently getting home loans for brothels featuring 13-year-old Salvadoran girls illegally smuggled into this country, ACORN officials could soon be helping regulate your local bank, thanks to an amendment adopted by Rep. Barney Frank's House Financial Services Committee. The amendment was sponsored by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, and provided that five slots on the oversight board for the proposed new Consumer Financial Protection Agency be reserved for representatives of "consumer protection, fair lending and civil rights, representatives of depository institutions that primarily serve underserved communities, or representatives of communities that have been significantly...

Barney Frank Frank: "We Are Trying On Every Front To Increase The Role Of Government" (Video)

Height of Chutzpah http://www.wiseandfrugalgovernment.blogspot.com/ On October 3rd, Business Week published an Associated Press article on the compensation package for the new Freddie Mac Chief Financial Officer, Ross Kari. Mr. Kari was presented with a package "worth as much as $5.5 million. That includes an almost $2 million cash signing bonus and a generous salary that could top $2.3 million" according to the AP (link below). The article goes on to explain that the generous pay package was established to be competitive with the other financial sector jobs presumably available to Mr. Kari. You remember, Freddie Mac surely. The government-controlled mortgage...

A new bill in Congress to increase financial regulation would allow the federal government to seize institutions deemed “too big to fail” if Treasury saw a large enough risk of collapse. McClatchy reports that some on Capitol Hill have begun to refer to it as a “death panel” for banks, apparently more as a joke than a concern. Have any of them actually read the Constitution, especially the Fifth Amendment? Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, worked over the weekend and throughout Monday to draft the legislation. It would provide the government with first-ever...

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) says Democrats are "trying on every front to increase the role of government."

Give Ed Schultz credit for something: on his MSNBC show this evening, he hosted an amusing smackdown between Barney Frank and Ralph Nader, perhaps the two most morose public men in America. For once, Barney was attacked from the left. The gist of Ralph's rebuke was that Frank hasn't gone far enough in regulating the financial industry. Frank was finally so provoked that he claimed/admitted that when it comes to regulation, Democrats are "trying on every front to increase the role of government." View video here.

WASHINGTON – The Treasury Department and a senior House Democrat have decided against making financial firms pay upfront the costs of dismantling them if regulators decide they have grown "too big to fail," according to a House aide familiar with the plan. Instead, those companies would be allowed to borrow money from the government. The government would then recoup the costs by either seizing the firm's profits or seeking restitution from the entire industry, the aide said. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because details had not been released. Rep. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House...

From the pages of Government Doesn’t Listen, Part MMXLVII, we have this stunning example from the House Financial Services Committee. Yesterday, Reps. Maxine Waters, Barney Frank, and the rest of the Democrats decided to grant community organizers governing powers by giving them a role in shaping and enforcing new regulations on the American financial industry. That seems to include, although not explicitly, ACORN:

The other day a story came out in the Washington Post indicating that Senate plans for “health reform” could very much end up coming down to this: Get healthy or the get taxed to death, with the emphasis on dying sooner so you can get the hell out of the way. So, in the interest of brevity, let’s just break down an April 2009 report by Politico, when the debate over national health takeover was just beginning so soon after America woke up to the fact that Democrats (and Democrat lite Senators Olympia Snow and Susan Collins) had Obuggered us...

July 2004: Obama makes keynote speech at the Democratic convention and is hailed as the future of the party. October 2004: Congressman Barney Frank [D-MA] speaks as a witness to the Senate Judiciary Committee about his belief that the people of the United States should be able to elect a president of their choosing, even if that candidate is not a natural-born citizen. In these comments, Frank all but names Obama and describes our current situation to the letter. Obama’s opposition in the senate race is mysteriously swift boated at the last minute, (ironically by having his divorce records...

Florida Bill Says: October 15, 2009 at 7:04 PM Just a coincidence? July 2004: Obama makes keynote speech at the Democratic convention and is hailed as the future of the party. October 2004: Congressman Barney Frank [D-MA] speaks as a witness to the Senate Judiciary Committee about his belief that the people of the United States should be able to elect a president of their choosing, even if that candidate is not a natural-born citizen. In these comments, Frank all but names Obama and describes our current situation to the letter. Here is the audio clip of his remarks. BARNEY...

While I found the clip in a post at http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/, I posted the clip url of Frank because it is amazing to listen to. Barney Frank clearly states that "natural born" should not be a requirement to be president. There you have a glimpse into the Democrat's thinking.They certified Obama with the idea that they would argue the constitutional requirement for "natural born" which is that he should be born in the US and that his parents should also is no longer applicable.

Almost two-thirds of all bad mortgages in our financial system were bought by government agencies or required by government regulations. Recent reports that the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) will suffer default rates of more than 20% on the 2007 and 2008 loans it guaranteed has raised questions once again about the government's role in the financial crisis and its efforts to achieve social purposes by distorting the financial system. The FHA's function is to guarantee mortgages of low-income borrowers (the mortgages are then sold through securitizations by Ginnie Mae) and thus to take reasonable credit risks in the interests of...

For decades, Congressman Barney Frank has been the iconic image of gay civil rights advocacy on Capitol Hill. He was one of the few openly gay elected officials in Washington for years. I was once proud to say, "Barney Frank has got my back." But as one of the most vocal critics of the National Equality March, Frank has many LGBTQ Americans wondering if he has become a bureaucratic gatekeeper. And worse, many under the age of 40 are asking if Barney Frank is now the iconic image of the generational schism of our gay rights movement. Several march-goers reported...

Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank is not backing down from his remarks that this weekend's gay march on Washington is “a waste of time at best.” Frank, the nation's most powerful openly gay elected official, criticized the effort a second time in less than a week. On Tuesday, he said on the Michelangelo Signorile radio show: “I literally don't understand how this will do anything. People are kidding themselves. I don't want people patting themselves on the back for doing something that is useless. Barack Obama does not need the pressure.” Thousands of gay activists are expected to descend on Washington...

Via Breitbart, a reminder that it’s never too early to Godwin a policy discussion, especially when it’s already super-charged with rage and bad faith. To be clear, he’s not comparing U.S. immigration law to the Holocaust; he’s saying that if immigration law then was like immigration law now, his ancestors never would have made it here and would have ended up in the camps. Which may, for all I know, be true in the particular case of his family, but as a general rule, it’s revisionist history. From the Jewish Virtual Library: Thousands of Jews in Germany were successful in...

Rep. Barney Frank: "If America had the kind of immigration policy that some people would like today my whole family obviously would have been whipped out in the Holocaust."

Some of these I haven't yet seen, and I've seen a lot of these clips. Words from: Russ Feingold Kathleen Sebelius Paul Krugman Barney Frank Ezra Klein Rahm Emanuel and Jan Schakowsky

House lawmakers want to pry open the books of the famously secretive Federal Reserve with legislation that would subject the central bank to a sweeping congressional audit. The effort is overwhelmingly bipartisan. Hardline conservatives and liberal Democrats have banded together in their criticism of the Fed as a major power broker in the financial system that doesn't answer to Congress. Friday's debate comes as lawmakers consider a proposal by President Barack Obama that would give the Fed new powers to prevent another economic crisis. "Nobody in my district thinks that the Fed has done such a wonderful job of running...

Like rats deserting a sinking ship, ACORN's many enablers over the years are racing for the exits as the scope of the organization's shenanigans come to light. Even leftist fellow-traveler -- and, until now, stalwart ACORN defender -- Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is squirming. What took them so long? We've been warning about the group for ages.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., on Friday backed a bill to require a broad congressional auditing of how the Federal Reserve carries out its monetary policy, including how much it has lent and will lend to specific banks as part of its bank bailout program. "We are serious about some legislation in this regard," said Frank at a hearing on the bill. "However, some time needs to elapse before certain disclosures take place...we are working together; we want there to be publicity, but we don't want there to be a market effect in the...

Remember all the rhetoric from the Washington and media leftocracy that the right is poisoning the airwaves and TV with “hate speech”? (In fact, Chris Matthews is so concerned about right-wing hate, he has preemptively laid blame at the feet of conservative radio if anything bad happens to Barack Obama.) And remember not too long ago a certain Republican Congressman, Joe Wilson, was lambasted for purportedly creating an atmosphere of incivility within the hallowed halls of Congress? Well, yesterday Jay Leno had the loathsome Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) on. During the conversation, this exchange took place: LENO: If you had...

It was a bad news day yesterday for the community organizers at Acorn, now caught up in Day 15 of a burgeoning scandal that has seen the group condemned by Congress and its financial records subpoenaed by Louisiana's Democratic attorney general. Last night, the Internal Revenue Service severed its ties with Acorn, which had been an IRS partner in providing low-income workers with tax preparation assistance. But the real body blow came when Rep. Barney Frank abruptly threw Acorn under the bus, telling Fox News: "I think they have forfeited their right to get [federal] funds." Mr. Frank said he...

One of the left’s favorite (and lamest) rhetorical tricks is to simply reprint one of their opponent’s statements, verbatim, and without comment. You see, the statement’s idiocy and offensiveness is self-evident, and will surely shock the conscience of any “right thinking” reader. No rebuttal required. It’s a lazy, sophomoric ploy. I suppose the left has been our self-appointed cultural hall monitor for so long they’ve lost the ability, or the need, to offer up sound counterarguments. There’s a classic example of this dopey tactic up at Media Matters today. The Media Matters post is nothing more than a video clip...

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--Two top House Democrats requested Tuesday that the Congressional Research Service conduct an analysis into whether recent legislation to strip federal funds from community-organizing group Acorn is unconstitutional. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., ...