TVSquad

Both Republicans and Democrats have said this about him. It's a pretty well-known fact in D.C. -- I've lived here for 20 years and I've heard that about him from friends and enemies, in newspaper and magazine profiles, long before he was head of the Finance Committee. Don't judge someone's intelligence by how they sound.

"I do not believe that we're facing any kind of crisis."

Barney Frank in 2003 regarding Fannie and Freddie. Today he blames the republicans. yeah, what a smart guy.

Nearly everybody said that we were not going to have any kind of crisis, Eugene. You certainly didn't see the Republicans, who were in charge at the time, pushing for reform. As soon as the Democrats took over, they tried to push some reforms, but were pushed back by the minority.

Only you're wrong:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

The republicans sounded the alarm and barney frank Melvin L. Watt, both dems, were right there calling the whole thing a "shell game" and tried to make it a class issue and not an economic issue.

But good try in trying to rewrite history.

Oh eugene... I've already heard another explaination that is blaming the Clinton administration...

You know, telling the reader that Clinton was the reason, that he tried to get affordable housing to the poor and that now Barney Frank in 2005 just tried to push the Clinton idiology on.

As if the Republicans did not hold the majority in both the Congress and the White House for eight years and in the White House for six until 2006.

It's so utterly ridiculous... the housing market simply was the next great idea from all the lobbyists after the internet bubble burst in 2000. Another way to get more money out of the system.

And the people who are really stupid are those who thought that the cost of living might not increase... that a loan that started with barely affordable monthly rates which change in the third or fourth year would be affordable factoring in a miracle or a better job during that time, or thinking you could flip the house you bought with the money or built after two years and just move to another home, easily paying off the debt with the huge profit you made.

It was a huge pyramid scheme and all tried to have their part. The idiotic people who got the loans, the greedy bank employees who lived of the bonuses they got for signing the loans, the bank managers, the lobbyists in Washington, the Banks themselves, the guys on Wall Street trading the banks shares... et cetera.

This was a juicy system for both democrats and republicans, never mind the fact that this is exactly what forced Japan into a ten year deflation at the beginning of the 1990ies.

But let's just keep on playing the blame game.

As if the greedy bastards were all on one side of the aisle.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the republicans were saints in all this. My personal theory is that our current situation can be traced straight to Reagan and Baker's idiotic devaluing of the dollar against the yen.

My only point was that Barney Frank isn't some super smart guy, he's right there with everyone else who tried to earn political capital by selling out our nations long term economic interests.

Well, if you think that Americans are so incredibly stupid as to not understand what satire is and think that just because they saw something on the TV they'll run out and do it... then yes, ordering people to shoot fat cats is obviously worse than time after time laying into the Palin family.

Well put

You do know how incredibly wrong your description of events is, right? Independent companies pushed the subprime loans, which were approved by people who had no idea what they were doing, and basically approved the loan if they felt like it. These unbelievable junk loans were packaged into securities that the rating agencies said were AAA, and were cut up and sold all across the world. The Democrats certainly didn't see this coming before they came into the majority (they did try to put forward some reforms in 2006 but were pushed back by Republicans and some conservative members of their caucus), and they did ignore the Bush Administration in 2005, as did everybody else.

People couldn't afford the loans anymore because they suddenly had to start paying back the principal + huge amounts of interest.

The fact is that Bush probably isn't directly responsible for this current fiscal crisis, but Republicans in general certainly are, along with their nominee, John McCain. They pushed for deregulation for decades (along with some Democrats, but mostly Republicans), and that is ultimately what was responsible for this mess. People took advantage of the loose rules and went wild. We are all paying for Reagonomics, and the "Free Market above all else", that the Republicans embraced.

Uhm... you obviously don't watch the Daily Show, or the Colbert Report. Obama and ball-less Democrats get ridiculed all the time. Not as much as Republicans, but then again, the Republican Party was practically concieved as a source of comedy and mockery. The Democratic Party, which, at its core, is trying to deal with the real problems at the center of this country, just isn't as funny.

No you are fine. It's Bob. It's the time of the month. I call it "vicious cycle" ^^;

He comes up with this stuff now and then and I find myself agreeing and feel dirty afterwards.