Barney the Underwriter – WSJ.com
Old Tefflon Barney Frank is up to his neck in power and more power and seems to be King of the DC Manure Pile. Just months after the financial melt down which caused the US tax payers to have to Bail Out all the banks and purchase Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the two largest mortgage holders in the country because they had been too lax in handing out mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them Barney is again telling them to let up again.. Rep. Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd were the two people most responsible for not allowing regulators to enforce the rules for the then two private mortgages brokerages Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because of their Chairmanship of their respective banking committees. And yet dirt never sticks to these men. Senator Dodd sold his mutual funds after hearing the report of the financial mess from Sec. Treasury Paulson and before it was made public. Rep. Frank took the Chrysler Dealership in his district from the list of those to be closed and no one said a word about it tho 3000 others across the nation were closed down.
Now Rep Frank is telling Fannie and Freddie to let people purchase condos whether they can afford them or not. Except this time it is with your dime because Fannie and Freddie are now owned and funded by you the tax payer.
He and New York Representative Anthony Weiner have sent a letter to the heads of Fannie and Freddie exhorting them to lower lending standards for condo buyers.
After two years of telling us how lax lending standards drove up the market and led to loans that should never have been made, Mr. Frank wants Fannie and Freddie to take more risk in condo developments with high percentages of unsold units, high delinquency rates or high concentrations of ownership within the development.
Fannie and Freddie have already lost tens of billions of dollars betting on the mortgage market — with that bill being handed to taxpayers. They face still more losses going forward, because in the wake of their nationalization last year their new “mission” has become to do whatever it takes to prop up the housing market. The last thing they need is lawmakers like Mr. Frank, who did so much to lay the groundwork for their collapse, telling them to play faster and looser with their lending standards.
Fannie and Freddie have always been political creatures under the best circumstances. But we don’t remember anyone electing Mr. Frank underwriter-in-chief of the United States.
