Blaming Barney Frank for financial crisis

A Boston Herald report at the link below says an instant poll, conducted by the newspaper, put blame on Barney Frank (pictured).

Rep. Frank (D-Mass) is considered the engineer of the “financial train wreck.”

Barney Frank is chairman of the House Financial Services panel. In the poll he received more blame than anyone else including President Bush or former fed chief Alan Greenspan.

Some [Boston Herald] readers argue all you have to do is click over to YouTube and listen to Frank, in the fall of 2003, swear “Fannie and Freddie (are) not in a crisis!” and are “fundamentally sound financially.”

The second link below shows a September 2003 report:

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee.

Baney Frank’s reply in 2003 was, The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.

As we are finding out now, problem was not exaggerated!

At the third link below is a report saying that Barney Frank was accused of ‘cooking the books’ for his gay lover Herb Moses. At the time Moses was a Fannie Mae executive!

Link here, here and here.