The announcement that Barney Frank will retire at the end of this congressional session, was anti-climatic, and long overdue. Over the years I listened as Barney spoke w/ reporters & on the issue of Fannie & Freddie’s financial status, he always told the reporters they were financially solvent.
Of course Barney also typically added that if there were to be a problem, the mortgage giants were federally protected. The public will take care of any problems.
Barney never really explained that tidbit. What he meant & what he and those reporters should have emphasized in their reports was, if Fannie & Freddie go belly up, the American taxpayer would be expected to cover all their losses, by law. This despite the fact they are only ‘quasi’ public entities. Supposedly being quasi public is different than being public. To those stuck paying the bills, there is NO difference at all.
Barney led the public & gullible members of congress down the proverbial garden path. And during the last three to five years of operations, Barney knew for fact those entities were about to fail spectacularly. The loss ratio was growing each year. No, it was growing month to month. That so many financial instruments failed so abjectly in such a short period of time, remains an issue that only serious financial auditors will ever be able to understand and determine what really happened. It sure looks to me like someone or some entity or entities, created the circumstances that allowed or pushed those mortgage giants over the edge & if this is true, then it was done for a specific purpose, such as currency manipulation. Personally, I suspect ‘we the people’ have been had & I mean seriously had!
So Good-bye Barney Frank. If only we had never met ye! Truth be told, Barney is the best example why we need term limits. His ultra liberal constituency kept re-electing him. Most people would have dumped him in the first or second term. His supposed intellect is a vacuous construct of a liberal media seeking to heap credibility on someone they felt was colorful and who provided some sort of political cover for those inept that the media wanted the public to overlook. If Barney had been term limited to 6 – two year terms, his disastrous effect on this nation could have been limited. Term limits tend to protect the rest of us from constituencies whose ability to discern capability from notoriety, is disabled.