Free Republic

Democrats, including President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), are blaming Donald Trump for the sudden collapse of two banks, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. But Barney Frank, a leading sponsor of the Dodd-Frank Act, sharply disagrees. The law, signed by then-President Barack Obama in 2010, made significant changes to Wall Street regulations and federal financial regulatory agencies in the aftermath of the financial meltdown in 2008. The bill, though controversial, was theoretically designed to protect Americans. Democrats say Trump is responsible because he signed a law rolling back some of the regulations enacted by the Dodd-Frank Act....

As a long-term strategy for defeating jihadists, Americans blaming George W. Bush ad infinitum is sure to be a winner -- for jihadists. It's right up there with American retreat from leadership in the world as high on their list of goals. And sure enough, former congressman Barney Frank heartily endorses both. Frank was among the guests on last night's Real Time with Bill Maher, brimming with his usual persnickety bluster. At one point he tangled with conservative columnist S.E. Cupp on the subject of the abrupt US military withdrawal from Yemen. This led to a pair of candid admissions...

It’s been more than three years since the state Legislature redrew his congressional district, forcing ex-U.S. Rep. Barney Frank into early retirement, but the cranky liberal war horse just can’t let it go. Case in point: The Massachusetts Humanities Council’s 40th anniversary gala at the JFK Library the other night. Frank was seated at the same table as incoming state Senate prez Stanley Rosenberg, who happened to be the point man for the Senate on redistricting, and Barney wasted no time in letting Stan have it! “He didn’t say hello, how are you, congratulations, nothing. He just started screaming at...

The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, sarcastically known as Dodd-Frankery and Dodd-Frankenstein, was passed into law in response to the financial crisis and recession of 2008. It contains the most drastic changes to financial regulations since the regulatory reform after the Great Depression. Proposed by Obama in 2009 and signed into law in 2010, the Democratic bill was the handiwork of former Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) in the House and former Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) in the Senate. It was supposedly going to stop banks from making loans to risky buyers who...

Former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, the nation's first openly gay member of Congress and liberal darling, implied in a recent interview that he is also a "pot-smoking atheist." Frank, a Democrat who served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts from 1981 to 2013, made his comments last Friday while serving as a guest on a talk show hosted by Bill Maher, a stand-up comedian known for his atheist, liberal-slanted comedy routine. Maher then went on to say that Frank was lucky to have worked in a "safe district" which didn't receive the kind of media...

Congressman Barney Frank blasted former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for hypocrisy on Wednesday, criticizing the marital track record of his political nemesis after Gringrich connected the Sandy Hook school massacre to the absence of religion in public life. “God appears to have been driven out of Mr. Gingrich’s private life if you look at his marital history,” Frank said on MSNBC. “He’s very selective about where he thinks fundamental religious tenets ought to be followed.” …

Liberal fascism, anyone? Add Barney Frank to the list of Thomas Friedman and Ray LaHood who regret that in the United States, that darn Constitution gets in the way of the enlightened class imposing its will on the rest of us benighted peons. Sparring with Mario Bartiromo on CNBC this afternoon, Dem congressman Frank, expressing frustration at his inability to get through legislation he favors, lamented: "unfortunately, under this American system of government, you have these checks and balances." Yeah, so unfortunate. If only Barney could be king for a day. View the video here.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) plans to marry his longtime partner in July, which will make him the first member of Congress in a same-sex marriage. “I think it’s important that my colleagues interact with a married gay man,” Frank said in an interview with New York magazine published online Sunday. Frank, who plans to retire from Congress this year after 16 terms, became the first openly gay member of Congress in 1987. Frank announced in January his plan to marry longtime partner Jim Ready. The marriage will take place in Massachusetts, one of the six states that have legalized gay...

I had no idea Mr. Magoo was a real person. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOr2C0eV7_A&feature=related

This past Saturday afternoon, I had the “pleasure” of attending one of the rarest of political events: A Barney Frank Town Hall meeting in New Bedford, Massachusetts. This was his first town hall meeting since the debacle where he compared his 2010 Democrat challenger, Rachel Brown, to a dining room table. While the focus of this town hall meeting was to educate his constituents on his desire to slash military funding in order to expand social programs, the best sound bite I caught came from a woman who asked Congressman Frank about the costs of illegal immigrants on society. I...

Mr. Frank's attitude seems to be that Americans need to justify why they should keep the money they inherit instead of the government needing to justify why they should be allowed to confiscate it. Video at link.

Rep. Barney Frank is already brawling with the man who will succeed him as chairman of the powerful U.S. House Financial Services Committee. Frank, the Newton Democrat who next month will lose his committee chairmanship due to Republican gains in the November elections, went on the offensive against Rep. Spencer Bachus, an Alabama Republican who’s already made clear his displeasure with the recently passed financial-industry overhaul bill, known as Dodd-Frank. Frank, who played a major role crafting the bill, jumped on a comment that Bachus made to Alabama’s Birmingham News, which reported Bachus as saying “Washington and the regulators are...

The embattled community group ACORN could help regulate the financial services industry under new financial regulatory reforms, said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on Wednesday. Bachmann, a consistent opponent of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), said that an amendment given in the House Financial Services Committee could allow the group to sit on an advisory panel that monitors the regulations. “ACORN may have a seat at the table being on the oversight committee regulating the financial services industry of the United States,” Bachmann said at a press conference. “And that would be a cruel joke." Bachmann’s remarks come...

House lawmakers this week are set to tackle some of the thorniest issues in the effort to overhaul financial rules, including how to take over large companies whose failure could threaten the economy and what role the Federal Reserve should have in policing markets' health. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) could release early this week draft legislation -- comprising several complementary bills -- with potentially broad implications over financial regulations, congressional aides said. The legislation could direct the government to wipe out shareholders of any institution taken over by the government, and give it the option...

A key House committee on Thursday approved the most high-profile part of the White House plan to prevent future financial collapse: The creation of a new agency to regulate consumer financial products. The House Financial Services committee voted along party lines 39-29 to empower a Consumer Financial Protection Agency to watch out for consumers. The vote marks one of the most significant steps yet in congressional efforts to reform regulation in response to the financial crisis. After more than a week of debate and changes, lawmakers and consumer advocates claimed victory. Most of the financial industry lobbied to kill it,...

Moderate Democrats — always courted and often feared in big roll call votes in the House — have backed down from a key fight over financial reform. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has persuaded a bloc of moderates to withdraw an amendment that would have watered down a consumer protection agency bill and shield banks from tougher state laws. Rep. Melissa Bean (D-Ill.) agreed to pull her amendment with a promise that Frank would continue to work with her to change the bill, though when that change would be made remains uncertain. This amendment, which would have...

House lawmakers want to pry open the books of the famously secretive Federal Reserve with legislation that would subject the central bank to a sweeping congressional audit. The effort is overwhelmingly bipartisan. Hardline conservatives and liberal Democrats have banded together in their criticism of the Fed as a major power broker in the financial system that doesn't answer to Congress. Friday's debate comes as lawmakers consider a proposal by President Barack Obama that would give the Fed new powers to prevent another economic crisis. "Nobody in my district thinks that the Fed has done such a wonderful job of running...

Responding to what he called the “unusual nature of the health care debate,” U.S. Rep. Barney Frank intends to host a town hall meeting on the national effort to overhaul the health care system. The meeting will be in addition to a Tuesday Dartmouth Town Committee meeting at which Frank plans to speak on a variety of Congressional issues, including regulation of financial institutions. In a statement released Friday, Frank said the interest in his attendance at the Dartmouth meeting – the town committee moved the event to a larger venue to accommodate the anticipated crowd – spurred him to...

When a divided House of Representatives approved controversial legislation last week to give shareholders a vote on executive compensation, they also OKd an even more contentious provision -- one that would require federal regulators write rules for financial firms prohibiting pay packages they believe are risky enough to bring down the entire economic system. But what incentives in compensation packages are risky enough to bring down the markets? Could government regulators -- such as the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. -- understand what constitutes risk? This is a matter vehemently disputed among conservatives and liberals,...

In a free market, we're so familiar with how prices are set -- how manufacturers decide how much of a thing to make and what they can afford to pay for labor and raw materials -- that we rarely even think about it. Set salaries too high and charge too little for the product, go bankrupt. Pay too little, your unskilled workers can't do the job. Yuri Maltsev, a former Soviet economic planner, reminds us the Communists had no such "consumer feedback loop." Trying to figure out what their national production quota should be for ice cream, they simply snitched...