Barney Frank, Hypocrite

Barney Frank wants to prosecute those most responsible for the financial meltdown, brought about by the bursting of the housing bubble. No shit, this is too funny to be fiction. From Reuters:

Now Frank is signaling that he, at least, is ready to begin the equally tough job of trying to fix the financial oversight system to prevent a repeat of the current crisis.

Wrongdoers will be prosecuted, he said. The committee will ask U.S. law enforcement authorities about their plans to prosecute executives and institutions that contributed to the worst financial crisis in generations.

"The American public has the right to know what enforcement actions are contemplated against those irresponsible and, in some cases, criminal actions that led to the current situation," Frank said.

Good job, Barney. Turn yourself in to the local prosecutor's office, because as it turns out, you're the person primarily responsible for the housing bubble. From the wayback machine we learn that President Bush asked Congress for an initiative to regulate Fannie and Freddie and that Congress wouldn't let him do it. Who stood in the way of regulating the housing sector? Ole Barney himself.

''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.''

Yeah, old Barney was at the center of the housing bubble, propping it up. He wanted the bubble.

And you have to wonder why. Well, it's because his gay lover worked at Fannie Mae. Yeah, that's right.

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.

Ouch! That's gotta hurt. It's a clear conflict of interest, but Barney, being ethically challenged, doesn't see it.

It's clearly a double-standard. If a Republican congressman got caught pushing initiatives that benefit his girlfriend, it would be a clear case, but because Barney is gay, no one wants to talk about it.

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."

Barney needs to shut the hell up and step the hell down. He's guilty as sin, and that from just the troubling perspective of a little blogger in Louisiana who had ten minutes to do a little Googling. Give a good federal prosecutor the keys and ole Barney might be doing the perp walk.

Even Bill Clinton thinks that the Democrats hold the lions share of the blame in the housing 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.

And Barney was leading the pack.