Monday, October 13, 2008

Should Barney Frank be forced to resign?

We have all seen that it is well established that Barney was one of the biggest supporters of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Most of us also thought that this was part of his desire to engage in social engineering by making it easier to obtain a mortgage by those who could not afford one.

However it has now come out that Barney had a serious conflict of interest. Barney's live-in significant other, Herb Moses, was Fannie Mae’s assistant director for product initiatives from 1991 to 1998. During this time Barney was on the committee that had jurisdiction over government-sponsored Fannie Mae.

Barney and Moses met in 1987 and lived together in Washington, D.C., until they split up in 1998.

National Mortgage News disclosed that Moses “helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs.”

Why is this not more prominently covered in the main stream media?

I do not believe that anyone can argue that this is not a conflict of interest. If it was a Republican involved in this arrangement you can bet your bottom dollar that it would be all over the media.

The major nail for the coffin is that in 1994, Frank thwarted efforts by President Clinton’s Department of Housing and Urban Development to impose new regulations on Fannie Mae.
"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.

In 1991, the year Moses was hired by Fannie, the Boston Globe reported that Frank pushed the agency to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively.

We must also note that Chris Dodd has yet to release his mortgage papers from Countrywide Financial even though he promised to weeks ago.

Why is Waxman not conducting investigations of these two?

2 comments:

Baxter said...

I know it kills you, Mark, but Fann + Fred enjoyed support, wide + deep, from both sides of the aisle. It's not a partisan issue as much as you'd like it to be.

Barney Frank will be one of the leaders that pulls us out of the myriad messes following 8 years of GOP WH + 6 years of Republican Congress.

Mark R. said...

Sure he will. He has done so much good for us already!