My readers know that I consider Barney Frank to be one of the top public enemies of the republic because of his almost 3 decade track record of progressivism in the US House. I believe that Barney needs to be fully investigated, charged and convicted when it comes to what he knew and when he knew it in regards to banking, housing, and regulation. (The other two PEs being Bernanke and Geithner.)
All of that being said, along comes a marine named Sean Bielat who has the economic credentials (Wharton) that Barney lacks, and who is giving B-Boy the political fight of his life.
Frank, a Democrat who began October with more than $1 million in his campaign account compared with Bielat’s $364,000, said he’s taking money out of his own pocket to fight anticipated spending by outside groups.
Those ‘outside groups’ being the silent majority of everyday Americans that are fueling all the constitutional candidates campaigns. You. Me.
I am hoping you will see what I see in this interview with Sean Hannity (10.26.2010), and hit the ‘ByeByeBarney‘ banner at the bottom of this article to donate to Sean’s real, bonafide chance to fire ‘Fannie and Freddie are sound’ Barney Frank. Without traitors like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd inside congress protecting them, Ron Paul might actually get that audit of the Fed and the abolition of the private banking cartel mafia.
Massachusetts woke up earlier this year and reclaimed “The Kennedy” seat for the people when they voted for Scott Brown. Now they have an even better choice in Sean Bielat to retire one of the main reasons for the financial collapse which started with the housing bubble created by the Dems’ Community Reinvestment Act in 1977 and continued with the House Financial Services oversight by 30 year career politician, Barney Frank. Mr. Frank, by the way, has absolutely no private sector or business experience at all; none, nada, zip. How does a guy that knows nothing about how a business actually survives and thrives, become the chairman of one of the most influential, (if not the most influential), committees in Congress? How?
I don’t think that Fannie and Freddie are financially insolvent. I don’t think they need large bailouts. – Barney Frank, 2008
and my personal favorite:
I doubt that Treasury will write a check to Fannie and Freddie – 2008
Not only has the Treasury written $148 billion in checks, but on December 25th, 2009 (Merry Christmas!), the Treasury lifted the $400 billion dollar cap for these two mortgage giants allowing them unlimited funding. The worst case scenario for the bailout of Fannie and Freddie is $1 TRILLION.
Barney has been the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee since 2007 which oversees the financial services industry in it’s entirety; housing, banking, investment, securities and insurance. Nobody could be this stupid, and from everything I have seen of Mr. Frank, he is one of the most intelligent people in Congress which bodes darkly for us. A service and conflict record of an employee in the private sector this lacking in judgement would beg for dismissal. Massachusetts now has a choice; may they choose wisely.
May I introduce to my readers the constitutional candidate (with a business background) that is giving Barney the first competition he has felt in more than two decades; Sean Bielat.
I do believe that Sean’s Wharton MBA sheepskin trumps Barney’s Harvard law degree when it comes to fixing the economy, and we all know that ‘it’s the economy stupid!’.
Program Manager, iRobot Corporation. Led $100 million, 100 person business line providing life-saving defense robots used to destroy roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan
Chairman, NATO Industrial Armaments Group. Led an international team studying the potential for use of advanced reconnaissance technology in urban warfare
Management Consultant, Mckinsey & Company
Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps (active duty)
Sean and his wife are residents of Brookline, MA and recently had their first child, Theo. They are members of St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church in Brookline. Sean currently works as an independent consultant and serves as an officer in the Marine Corps Reserve.
Sean worked his way through college and graduate school, aided by scholarships and the GI Bill. He now holds a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, a Bachelor of Arts from Georgetown University, and a Master of Business Administration from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Knights of Columbus, the International Institute for Security Studies, and the Council on Emerging National Security Affairs.
As I have stated in the past, all of these local races have become national referendums on the continued survival of America as a free nation. Scott Brown, Charles Djou, Nikki Haley, John Willoughby, Allen West, Marco Rubio, Dan Benishek, Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, Joe Miller…and the list goes on. Please donate to Sean’s campaign in any way that you can as taking down the great white shark, Barney Frank will do more to demoralize and derail the progressives than any other candidate except for Nancy. Remember, the other sweetheart deal, money man, Chris Dodd, is retiring.
Gerald Celente’s take on the financial reform bill written by those two great capitalists, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, and the “looming crash of 2010”. Mr. Celente understands that we have to get Wall Street out of the White House. The numbers, once again, do not lie.
Glenn gives a seventeen minute monologue about the financial regulatory reform bill that Obama just signed into law. Glenn is about to blow a gasket because it appears that he has figured out what’s in it and the effect that it is going to have on our republic. He believes the last nail has been hammered in the republic’s coffin, and I just have to wonder why he didn’t know about it sooner. We did…two months ago. (I’m still waiting for someone like Beck or Hannity to talk about the Office of Financial Research.) His monologue starts at 7:11 in Part 1 and continues through Part 2.
Rashid Khalidi (Barack’s buddy), Ben Bernanke’s continued idiocy, jobless claims are up, adding the public option to Obamacare (why, it’s already in there), and the financial regulation bill brought forward by Dodd and Frank.
Yep, they passed the 2300 page “kill small business” POS bill brought forward from those bastions of free market capitalism, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. Now it’s off to Chairman Zero’s desk for signature.
This new law will allow the federal government to grow even larger, and does nothing to protect consumers. Surprised? If you want to know how badly you are getting screwed, go here.
For those that are keeping track and want the reference page for all the roll call votes for anti-American and anti-Free Market legislation that Bush and Obama pushed through (including Financial Reform), visit the Roll Call Vote Page.
Tongue firmly in cheek, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) on Tuesday afternoon called on reporters to demand to see the birth certificate of new Rep. Charles Djou (R-Hawaii).
As Djou (pictured here) was being sworn into office, Frank walked the hallway of the Speaker’s Lobby off the House floor calling on the media to “do your job” and review Djou’s papers.
It was a small bit of payback for the enormous amount of attention some conservatives (and the media) paid to the is-the-president-really-from-America controversy.
But, unlike the commander-in-chief, as Frank knows, being born outside the U.S. does not preclude you from becoming a member of Congress.
I wrote about it; I tried to warn people, but after the healthcare fight we just went through, I think most people just wanted a breather from battling the fascists in Washington (to our long-lasting detriment).
Now we have the financial reform bill that includes the new federal agency Office Of Financial Research, and the Bureau of Consumer Protection keeping track of every single financial transaction you could possibly imagine; including your bank balance, and when you walk to the ATM to take cash out. I wasn’t lying, but I do think I was one of very few writing about it.
The fascists have the banks, the insurance companies, the credit card companies, the car companies, OUR healthcare, and now Americans’ financial transactions.
(CNSNews.com) – Senate Democrats united to pass a financial regulatory bill that allows the government to collect data on any person operating in financial markets at any level, including the collection of personal transaction records from local banks, including customers’ addresses and ATM receipts. (emphasis mine)
The Senate voted 59-39 on Thursday to pass the bill – the chief aim of which is to more-heavily regulate the financial industry – sending it to a conference committee in the House of Representatives, where differences between the House and Senate versions will be ironed out.
The bill, if it becomes law, will create the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and empower it to “gather information and activities of persons operating in consumer financial markets,” including the names and addresses of account holders, ATM and other transaction records, and the amount of money kept in each customer’s account.
The new bureaucracy is then allowed to “use the data on branches and [individual and personal] deposit accounts … for any purpose” and may keep all records on file for at least three years and these can be made publicly available upon request.
*break*
Shelby slammed the new consumer bureaucracy, saying that it was meant not to protect consumers but to “manage” them by monitoring their behavior.
“Mr. President, make no mistake, behind the veil of anti-Wall Street rhetoric is an unrelenting desire to manage every facet of commerce under the guise of consumer protection.
“They may be interested in protecting consumers, but they are more interested in managing them,” Shelby said.
Shelby also criticized the idea that Americans need government to watch over their every financial move, saying that it was better to allow people the freedom to make their own choices and fail than to never allow them the freedom to choose at all.
“Mr. President, I have faith in the American people and their ability to make good choices,” said Shelby. “Granted, we do not always choose well. But I believe that a poor choice freely made is far superior to a good choice made for me.”
“I am afraid that the architects of this bill do not share this sentiment,” he said. “Nor do they share my faith in the American people.”
Shelby further said that the ability of the Federal Reserve to collect such detailed information about the most basic of financial transactions was the beginning of an effort by government to regulate every financial action of every American citizen.
“This new consumer bureaucracy is intended by its architects in the Treasury to begin the process of financial regulation with the intent of changing the behaviors of the American people,” said the senator.
Shelby appears to be correct. The bill allows the bureau to collect any and all information on any person operating in the financial markets.
As it reads: “[T]he Bureau shall have the authority to gather information from time to time regarding the organization, business conduct, markets, and activities of persons operating in consumer financial services markets.”
Meanwhile, depending on the conference version of this bill, you may be able to fund a new federal agency that takes idle appropriations, invests them, and keeps the profits. Those profits are ‘not considered the government’s property’. I am still trying to ascertain who that money actually belongs to because it is not yours anymore.
I am currently reading this bill and wanted to drop an interesting tidbit on you. For those interested in reading the 114 page Manager’s Amendment, go here. I am only a couple hundred pages into this POS but starting on page 60, a new government office is to be established. The “Office Of Financial Research” will be part of the Treasury, and will have a Director appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. This office will also have a data collection center to keep track of all financial and nonbank financial institutions so as to be able to report to Congress on companies that ‘threaten’ the economy. It is unclear how big or how many new government employees this office will create, but considering how events are unfolding now with Obamacare, I’m assuming pretty large.
The interesting tidbit pertains to the Financial Research Fund that is to be established and the ability of the Office that is providing Congress with reports to invest monies they aren’t using. Let me know if you think that’s a conflict of interest, and if you would like to know exactly how much money that is?
“Funds obtained by, transferred to, or credited to the Financial Research Fund shall be immediately available to the Office, and shall remain available until expended, to pay the expenses of the Office in carrying out the duties and responsibilities of the Office.”
The above quotes are from Chris Dodd’s markup draft. I went to the actual amended bill (Amendment No. 3739 of Bill S. 3217) that was passed and found the pertinent information starting on page 62, with the investment and non-governmental monies section on page 78. It’s still in there.
At this point, the underground economy is about to get a bit larger.
UPDATE: More information on the Office Of Financial Research, here.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Fannie Mae has again asked taxpayers for more money after reporting a first-quarter loss of more than $13 billion.
The mortgage finance company, which was rescued by the government in September 2008, said it needs an additional $8.4 billion from the government to help cover mounting losses.
Fannie Mae says it lost $13.1 billion, or $2.29 per share, in the January-March period. That takes into account $1.5 billion in dividends paid to the Treasury Department. It compares with a loss of $23.2 billion, or $4.09 a share, in the year-ago period.
The rescue of Fannie Mae and sister company Freddie Mac is turning out to be one of the most expensive aftereffects of the financial meltdown. The new request for aid will bring Fannie Mae’s total to $83.6 billion. The total bill for the duo will now be nearly $145 billion.
Late last year, the Obama administration pledged to cover unlimited losses through 2012 for Freddie and Fannie, lifting an earlier cap of $400 billion.
Fannie and Freddie play a vital role in the mortgage market by purchasing mortgages from lenders and selling them to investors. Together the pair own or guarantee almost 31 million home loans worth about $5.5 trillion. That’s about half of all mortgages. (emphasis mine)
“The federal debt stands at $8 trillion. But the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Federal Home Loan Bank debt stands at $8 trillion as well,” Anthony Sanders, a real estate expert from George Mason University, told the recent House hearing. Together, those debts are greater than a year’s gross domestic product, which he called a “Grecian Formula” of debt issuance to fund housing goals.
A solution to the thorny problem of housing-market finance is notably absent from the financial reform bill now working its way through Congress.
Mitch McConnell on Dodd’s 1336 page financial reform bill. As you may have already guessed, the Monster is totally against the Frank version and this version because it gives the government too much control over our money coming and going. The keywords here? Fannie and Freddie. Als0, the arbitrary decision making should make all Americans uneasy.
For weeks, the White House strategy on financial regulatory reform remained an open question: Would President Barack Obama water down his bill just to get something passed — the way he did on health care?
A Palinesque “Hell no!” was the answer coming from the White House on Wednesday as the president, his senior aides and his allies on Capitol Hill issued an ultimatum to Republicans fighting Democrats’ plans to overhaul financial oversight.
“For the president, you have to be willing to accept a strong bill,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, after Obama emerged from a contentious meeting with GOP congressional leaders.
“If the effort to get this close is simply to take steps to weaken that legislation, that’s not what the president is interested in.”
Democrats are so emboldened that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is prepared to bring the Banking Committee bill to the floor with no major concessions to Republicans and essentially dare them to vote against the measure, senior leadership aides said.
At a time when Wall Street is as reviled as government, Democrats are willing to gamble that at least one Republican — and maybe as many as a half-dozen — will break ranks. At the same time, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is betting he can hold his caucus together to deny Democrats even a single vote.
I am currently reading this bill and wanted to drop an interesting tidbit on you. For those interested in reading the 114 page Manager’s Amendment, go here. I am only a couple hundred pages into this POS but starting on page 60, a new government office is to be established. The “Office Of Financial Research” will be part of the Treasury, and will have a Director appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. This office will also have a data collection center to keep track of all financial and nonbank financial institutions so as to be able to report to Congress on companies that ‘threaten’ the economy. It is unclear how big or how many new government employees this office will create, but considering how events are unfolding now with Obamacare, I’m assuming pretty large.
The interesting tidbit pertains to the Financial Research Fund that is to be established and the ability of the Office that is providing Congress with reports to invest monies they aren’t using. Let me know if you think that’s a conflict of interest, and if you would like to know exactly how much money that is?
“Funds obtained by, transferred to, or credited to the Financial Research Fund shall be immediately available to the Office, and shall remain available until expended, to pay the expenses of the Office in carrying out the duties and responsibilities of the Office.”
“Shall not be construed to be Government Funds…”. Whose money is it then?
I’m still reading, and will let you know what else I find. This bill is very opaque compared to Barney Frank’s bank heist bill. The link for all the Senate Banking Committee’s documents is here.
When Barney Frank was asked about intervening on behalf of a home state bank for Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) funds, the Massachusetts Democrat admitted he spoke to a “federal regulator” but according to the Wall Street Journal, “he didn’t remember which federal regulator he spoke with.”
According to explosive new Treasury Department emails uncovered by Judicial Watch, it appears this nameless bureaucrat is none other than then-Treasury Secretary Henry “Hank” Paulson!
These documents, which we obtained in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, indicate that Frank personally called former Secretary Paulson regarding a TARP cash infusion for the Boston-based OneUnited Bank. And it worked. On November 25, 2008, following Frank’s intervention, the Treasury Department awarded $12,063,000 in bailout funds to OneUnited, which is located in Frank’s district.
Moreover, according to these documents, Frank is not the only Democratic Congressman with dirty hands in the OneUnited bank scandal. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), whose husband, Sidney Williams, served on the OneUnited Board of Directors, also intervened on behalf of the Massachusetts Bank. (Williams resigned shortly after Waters approached federal regulators regarding the OneUnited TARP grant.)
Among the key documents is an October 17, 2008, email from former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Banking and Finance King Mueller to former Assistant Treasury Secretary Neel Kashkari and other Treasury officials referencing the contact between Frank and Paulson:
Just spoke w/ Jim [Segel] in BF’s [Barney Frank’s] office. This is about One United Bank (a minority owned bank in BF’s district). Maxine Waters is interested in the bank as well, Treas[ury] and others met w/ them (minority bankers assoc) last month per the Water’s request. They were a big holder in f/f preferred. BF is interested and may call HMP [Henry Paulson] again about this. FDIC is their primary federal regulator. [Emphasis added.]
And there is also this October 16, 2008, email from Kashkari to former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Appropriations and Management Peter Dugas: “Peter, Jim Siegel [sic] from Frank’s office called a few times-can one of you follow-up with him?” (Segel serves as Frank’s Chief Counsel.) Paulson’s October 2008 calendar, which has been released separately, details calls from Frank on October 2, 3, 7, 9, 13, and 17.
With respect to Rep. Waters, the documents include a January 13, 2009, email from Brookly McLaughlin, Treasury’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, expressing surprise at Waters’ apparent conflict of interest: “Further to email below, WSJ [Wall Street Journal] tells me: …Apparently this bank is the only one that has gotten money through section 103-6 of the EESA law. And Maxine Waters’ husband is on the board of the bank. ??????”
The fact that Frank and Waters improperly intervened to score some TARP cash for OneUnited does not shock me. This is exactly the kind of corrupt deal-making I expected when the federal government decided to throw massive amounts of taxpayer dollars at private institutions. But I have to say, it is a rare case indeed when the documented evidence of impropriety is so clear.
These documents indicate that Barney Frank has been flagrantly dishonest about his role in lobbying for OneUnited. I mean, who is Frank kidding trying to suggest he didn’t remember calling Hank Paulson? It’s early but this looks to me like it could mushroom into another Keating Five-type scandal. And it certainly calls into question whether Rep. Frank should remain head of the powerful House Financial Services Committee.
No wonder the Obama Treasury Department stonewalled the release of these documents.
As I’ve mentioned previously, without the intervention of Frank and Waters, OneUnited would seem an unlikely recipient of TARP funds. As reported in the January 22, 2009, edition of the Wall Street Journal, the Treasury Department indicated it would only provide funds to healthy banks in order to jump-start lending. Not only was OneUnited Bank in massive financial turmoil, but it was also “under attack from its regulators for allegations of poor lending practices and executive pay abuses, including owning a Porsche for its executives’ use.” The bank continues to flounder and is one of the few financial institutions to have not paid dividends to the federal government in exchange for the TARP cash infusion.
The good news is that the media is beginning to cover this scandal. The Fox Business Channel highlighted our work just last night. To view the segment, go to our YouTube channel here.
Let me be clear, Goodwin Liu has the most radical views of any federal judicial nominee in recent memory. As former chairman of the far-left American Constitution Society he is in no small measure a leader of the opposition for those of us who don’t want judicial activists on the bench. I can understand, considering his own background, why Obama would want to appoint an inexperienced liberal to the courts, but the Senate needs to do its job and probe Liu’s views and qualifications. Many think he’s being groomed for a Supreme Court appointment.
By the way, our effort to educate the Judiciary Committee on the Liu nomination recently earned the attention of Fox News Channel. Check it out on Judicial Watch’s YouTube channel here.
