Friday, April 3, 2009

Barney Frank Declares All Out War On Republicans

Earlier Barney started war on Mark To Market. Now he is expanding to two fronts, crossing the Volga river deep into republican territory. Just want to pointed out that the whole two-front thing did not work out too well for Germany.

For astute readers, the challenge is to spot the 10 occurrences of hypocricy in the Chairman's most recent populist missive.

Frank Statement on March Unemployment Statistics

Washington, DC – House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) issued the following statement in response to Labor Department statistics released today showing that the U.S. economy lost 663,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate rose to 8.5 percent, the highest in 26 years:

“Today’s employment report underscores the importance of continuing the President’s strategy of promoting recovery by investing in job-creating measures that promote a restoration of shared, sustainable growth. Yesterday the Republicans in Congress unanimously rejected that path by supporting a budget that, if enacted, would choke off the promise of growth in order to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthy.

“It is not just Republicans in Washington. In particular, the fact that unemployment continues to grow – an inevitable consequence of the sort of recession we are in – emphasizes the cruelty of those Republican governors who, for political gain, seek to deny unemployed men and women and their children the moderate benefits that the recovery package had for them. Prohibiting people who have lost their jobs from getting the amount of replacement income offered in that bill is about as bad as policy can get from both an economic and social standpoint.

“Democrats will continue the hard work of promoting recovery, investing in our future, and cleaning up the financial mess that the Bush administration left behind. Republicans, it appears, will stand idly by and root for us to fail.”
Sphere: Related Content
Print this post

12 comments:

TPC said...

You've gotta love how the people who helped cause this mess are the ones strategizing to get us out. Bernanke didn't see this coming. Paulson, arguably, had more to do in causing this than anyone, Barney Frank was all for home lending reform in the 90's, Geithner was the watch dog while all of this went down, etc, etc.

GlobalMacroSpeculator said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
dashingdwl said...

We need to march on Washington and not leave until these asshats resign.

Anonymous said...

comical. and he was the fat slob opposing the regulatory oversight of the GSEs the bush administration was pushing.

the fact that career politicians are re-writing the US economy is terrifying and is worth at least a few points in added risk premium.

dems way over-reaching, they will lose 1 house in 2010 and BHO's socialist agenda (sorry thats not PC "redistribution" agenda...or "restoring fairness" agneda) will be curtailed.

Anonymous said...

LMAO @ the picture

Anonymous said...

it's time to bring back the tarring and feathering. seriously.

MarketBlogic said...

A technical point of clarification here: if REpublicans were rooting for "us" to fail, then they wouldn't be standing idly by they'd be actively rooting around . . . .

Dean Corso said...

So what did Barney say that was not true?

secreformer said...

One of the sad trends of the ongoing credit crisis is that traders now follow Washington via C-Span the way we do Bloomberg and CNBC. As someone who has been doing this for years, Chairman Franks' recent letters, (referenced on this site,) are not as disturbing as his tirade on the House Floor last night.



The House debated and passed Team Obama's $3T budget, without a single Republican vote. At the conclusion of "regular business" Chairman Frank took to the House floor and began an attack on the Republicans for their role in the mortgage mess, that triggered the credit crisis. (House rules are more restrictive than the Senate. The only way Members can gain floor time is with the consent of the Speaker. Chairman Frank was granted time under the rules of the House.)



His speech was was 100% partisan in nature. The current financial regulatory system problems are the fault of Republicans, including Bush, Greenspan and every Republican Member of the House and Senate. Not a single Democrat has any responsibility. To make the point clear, Chairman Frank had a big "0" sign behind him and pointed to it throughout his address.



His speech was bizarre; a rant. It did advance some logic and reason, but then quickly veered off into the absurd. And sometimes the surreal. (He accused Republican House FinServ staffers of leaking personal smears against him. He said the editorial board of the WSJ were liars.) Several Republican Members were in the chamber and attempted to engage Chairman Frank, but they were rebuffed as Mr. Frank understood the rules of the floor and would not yield till he had had his say. For anyone involved in financial services reform this was difficult to watch.



Chairman Frank is a bright engaging person with a long and colorful history in the House. However, he seems angered and poisoned by the very partisanship he riles against. I hope he can set his anger aside and view financial services issues objectively. This important industry needs logic and reason, not more partisanship.

Anonymous said...

He's one of the few I would keep around because despite his flaws and regulatory failures, I do think there's hope that he'll do the right things, eventually.

Anonymous said...

great picture!!!

I hope that's real :-)

Anonymous said...

Barney Frank Declares All Out War On Republicans

Good for him. Republicans are bad for the country and bad for the world.

What? You disagree? Get back to me when you find the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.