Barney Frank is not an idiot. In fact, he's at his best when obfuscating to avoid his (and Dodd's) share of the blame for the financial collapse due to his insistance on supporting "expanded home ownership opportunities" through pressuring Fannie and Freddie and FHA and the mortgage originators and the banks and just about anybody who could sign their name to a loan to incentivize (translate : corrupt) the marketplace. Well, the banks and hedge funds and investment banks and anybody who could add up fees and commissions could see that this was a good thing. I mean why not help Americans to borrow more money than they could afford to repay? Why not "blow up" the housing marketplace with time bombs of Rate Resets through ARM, No-Doc loans, and every "casino chip" created to earn money for the "players." We are at virtually unlimited risk levels, and if I had to apportion the blame for the state of the economy and the financial marketplace, I would lay most of the housing collapse at Frand/Dodd's door, with generous helpings for those who ended the Glass/Steagall act separating banking and investment banking/trading operations, and another portion for the Federal Reserve who kind of knew early on that the mess was headed into unsustainable terrortory, but allowed politics to intefere.
Our current system needs/must have redesign-right now!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
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