Congressman Barney Frank met with reporters recently to further voice support for the $700 Billion TARP allocation while concurrently hinting at the need for defense cuts. In his statement, the Congressman said, “The biggest ongoing threat, I believe, to fiscal sanity in this country is an open-ended ever-expanding military budget.” These remarks are not a huge surprise considering recent rhetoric from our government and military leaders. Within the last month, Secretary of Defense Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services …
CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo has a must read interview with Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) in Business Week. Bartiromo asks: Should GM (GM) acquire Chrysler? I’m not competent to say. I try to resist the temptation that too many of us in politics and the media fall into, which is telling people a good deal more than we know. But earlier in the interview Frank knew exactly how to run the auto industry: How do you make sure the government doesn’t meddle too deeply in day-to-day operations and bring politics—like a push …
At first Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said she would never support an auto bailout bill that used money originally set aside to help Detroit develop fuel-efficient vehicles. But she relented. Then Pelosi claimed she wouldn’t support a bailout bill unless the Big Three promised to drop their lawsuit against California’s emissions requirements. Now Pelosi says she is willing to support the bailout without the Big Three dropping the lawsuit, but only if Republican lawmakers support the bill. Nobody should fall for Nancy’s head games. This Monday Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) …
Both the House and the Senate are set to gavel back into session this week, and both chambers’ first order of business will be a proposed bailout for Detroit’s Big Three: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) will introduce legislation to carve out $25 billion for Detroit from the $700 billion Wall Street bailout passed last month. This is on top of the $25 billion Congress already gave Detroit this past September. Oh, and the auto unions have already told Congress they …
With the election still a week away, Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, is already setting the stage for drastic cuts in defense spending, higher taxes, and bigger government. In a meeting with the editorial board of The Standard-Times, a local Massachusetts newspaper, Rep. Frank said he would support a 25 percent cut in military spending, a tax hike on the wealthy, help for state healthcare expenses, food stamps, and extended unemployment benefits. Congressman Frank’s plan hardly represents economic stimulus. This misguided proposal is based …
…it would be a shame if something should happen to it. Gangsters threatening those who fail to knuckle under are rarely so unsubtle as Friday’s letters to two hedge funds from the Chairs of the House Financial Services Committee and its subcommittees. Based on an article in the New York Times, Rep. Barney Frank and company believe the hedge funds are impeding the foreclosure relief provisions of the Hope for Homeowners program. What did the funds do? They reminded mortgage servicing companies that the mortgage holders must consent to modifications …
Listening to politicians on the left speak about the current financial turmoil, one gets the impression that when President Bush took office in 2001 there was a perfect financial regulatory system in place. Only since then, they claim, has it been systemically destroyed by the Bush administration. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says, “the Bush Administration’s eight long years of failed deregulation policies have resulted in our nation’s largest bailout ever, leaving the American taxpayers on the hook potentially for billions of dollars.” Barack Obama echoed this sentiment in the final …
Defending $150 billion worth of unrelated tax benefits that Congress stuffed into the already $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) told the International Herald Tribune: “If you don’t want politics in this process, you probably shouldn’t be handing it over to 535 politicians. That’s democracy.” We couldn’t have come up with a more succinct explanation for ending government intervention in the market if we tried. University of Chicago professor of law Richard Epstein elaborates for Forbes: Disasters like this latest financial meltdown don’t just happen. Mistakes …
NBC has re-posted that Wall Street bailout skit we mentioned before. NBC says they yanked the skit due to their ‘standards‘ but the Los Angeles Times notes: In the skit, a parody of a C-SPAN news conference replay, the Sandlers express puzzlement over why Pelosi invited them as victims because they’re really delighted with their fortune and laughingly see Wachovia Bank as the victim. A graphic beneath the Sandlers says, “People who should be shot.” Monday NBC mysteriously yanked the skit’s video from the network’s website, fueling online rumors the …
We weren’t the only ones flabbergasted by David Broder’s recent praise for the National Housing Trust Fund. Cato Institute adjunct scholar Arnold King writes at EconLog: Broder helped ruin my day in a number of ways. First, he reminded me about this program, which I had only seen in early versions of the housing bill, and which I had been assuming was dropped in order to avoid embarrassment. Second, he praised the program effusively, because Congress is doing something about “affordable housing.” Affordable housing? We have millions of unoccupied homes …
