The Senate Banking Committee welcomes Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) to testify on the first anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The financial regulation bill has contributed to higher unemployment by imposing needless regulation on small and large financial institutions. It has deterred investment by imposing ill-defined restrictions on those who want to invest in the economy. The law has recently been under increased scrutiny. Today also marks the opening of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by Dodd-Frank. Heritage’s Diane Katz called it an “unchecked regulatory …
Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) recently asserted that there is a “potential alliance” forming between Progressive and Tea Party lawmakers on the issue of defense spending cuts. Others have also noted this opportunity: “Arguably, the new Tea Party push on defense spending merely echoes long-standing progressive attacks on the Pentagon budget as the nation’s number one ‘entitlement’ program.” But defense is no entitlement program. It is one of the core responsibilities of the federal government, and a necessity for sustained security and an independent American foreign policy. The issue of defense …
As early as today, the House is set to approve Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-MA) financial regulation bill intended to prevent future Wall Street bailouts by granting regulators sweeping new powers to control firms deemed “too big to fail.” But as Heritage Senior Research Fellow David John explains below, the Frank bill actually encourages future bailouts by signaling to markets that the targeted firms guaranteed against failure, thus enabling risky business decisions. Worse, by empowering the FDIC to seize and close failing financial institutions, while also establishing a fund enabling the …
The Treasury Department and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank have just released a highly complex 253 page draft bill that is supposed to deal with questions ranging from indentifying and dealing with systemic risk facing the financial services system, regulating and closing failing “too big to fail” financial services firms, and a wide variety of other potential problems. As expected with a bill that long and detailed, it will take a while to understand everything that it contains, but first impressions are that it contains many bad ideas …
Last night on The Ed Show, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) debated Ralph Nader. Honesty ensued. Watch: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXPwr-MxvDQ[/youtube]
Two House committees this week approved derivatives legislation that composes a significant part of the Obama Administration’s Financial Services reform plan. Remarkably, for a plan crafted significantly by uber-liberal Barney Frank (Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee), the bill is notably less bad than the Administration’s original proposal, but still is flawed. The House Agriculture Committee also added amendments to the bill. Heritage noted before that derivatives market participants are rapidly changing their business practices and structures in a voluntary, cooperative effort, albeit under government sponsorship. The biggest danger …
The White House is losing the health care debate. Polls from National Public Radio, Wall Street Journal/NBC News, The Washington Post, Gallup, and Pew all show that the American people do not support President Barack Obama’s health care plan. The White House wants people to believe they are losing the health care debate because “scary … videos are starting to percolate on the internet” that are spreading “disinformation” about Obama’s health care plan. The White House is even encouraging Obama supporters to help them identify people spreading this “disinformation.” The …
Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee has suggested that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the now bankrupt housing finance giants, should relax their lending standards. This suggestion is farcical. One’s immediate reaction after the laughter has subsided might well be, “will we never learn?” For many years, analysts of diverse stripes warned that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing finance giants, were a disaster waiting to happen. But the financing giants also had giant friends in Congress, and so efforts to rein in Fan and Fred …
On a blogger conference call this morning, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) discussed a bill he introduced last week that would distribute the Federal government’s recently acquired GM and Chrysler stock to taxpaying Americans. “Instead of the Treasury owning 60 percent of shares in the new GM and 8 percent of Chrysler, you would own them, if you were one of about 120 million individuals who paid taxes on April 15,” Alexander explained. “This is the fastest way to get the stock out of the hands of Washington and back into …
The Obama Administration tried to portray the plan as no big deal, akin to simply filling in a loophole. The idea was to provide the FDIC with authority to seize failing “non–banK” financial institutions such as holding companies, insurance firms and hedge funds, similar to the powers they already have to take over failing banks. Such power, it argued, is necessary to avoid disruptive failures of huge institutions, which could threaten the financial institution as a whole. In particular, the Administration pointed to the AIG debacle, saying that the proposed …
