The The World Looks a Little Brighter Today - Thanks Barney

It hasn't been since I heard that Yassir Arafat was proclaimed dead that I was so buoyed by a news story. I mean it was a great day for all the world when Yassir Arafat assumed room temperature. This news is a little more specific to the United States, but it's no less a ray of sunshine in what's been a terribly dark couple of years. The news that Barney Frank is retiring from Congress should set all American hearts alight.

Frank is one of the nastiest, most dangerous men in Washington. Dangerous? What do you call it when one of the men most responsible for destroying the mortgage lending market is put in charge of writing the new law to "clean-up" the very system he helped destroy. I call it dangerous!

The mortgage market meltdown has had worldwide implications. The damage caused by Frank and his co-conspirators is responsible for economic hardship on everyone but the super rich. This is not merely middle class folks missing out on a Mexican vacation, this is people losing their jobs and their homes. Frank can say what he wants about President Bush's role in all of this, but he is a liar. There has been deliberate obscuring of the government's role in the subprime crisis. Content to allow the public to believe all the blame belongs to Wallstreet and the "banks", Frank and his partner in crime Chris Dodd - also retiring - walk away millionaires while Rome burns. The passage of the Dodd/Frank bill regulating the banks into the ground will ensure a legacy that lingers (and I mean that in the worse possible "scents") long after they are gone. 

This video is so indicative of Barney Frank's arrogance and willful deception... 





As for the reason Frank is retiring - who cares? In all actuality it's the 2010 census gerrymandering that is the primary reason, he stands a real chance of losing this go round. I would have loved to have seen that.

After sixteen terms, that's 32 years in Congress, Frank will leave a wealthy man. He's just another in a long line of Washington elites that cashed in on his position. He was the benefactor of campaign contributions from the very GSE institutions he vociferously defended right to the point of collapse.

As Doc Zero (John Hayward) says: "Today the man whose personal ambitions and blind ideology wreaked havoc upon the American financial system said he has “no regrets,” and you can be damn sure the media won’t force him to find any.  The absence of regret is one of the things that makes Big Government so dangerous."

 Goodbye Barney - can't say I'm gonna miss 'ya. I'll be too busy trying to elect people who will try to undo the damage you have done.



CW