" His partner, Jim Ready, 39, is a surfing enthusiast whom Frank met during a gay political fundraiser in Maine, where Ready still lives"

Jim Ready is a great name, but how active a surfing enthusiast can you be when you live in Maine?

 Reply

Having said that, he can try to shuffle the sub-prime lending blame around all that he wants, but people need to know the facts about his complicity. This was discussed about a week ago in this post:

[gawker.com]

Frank was part of the opposition to the following bills:

S.1508 Federal Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2003. If you read through the summary, you will see that "minimum and critical capital levels" are addressed. The Republicans didn't have a filibuster proof majority so the bill died on the floor. [www.govtrack.us]

See also, S. 190. Federal Housing Regulatory Reform Act of 2005. [www.govtrack.us]

These were both bills were introduced by Elizabeth Dole and Chuck Hagel. The first one was co-introduced by Sununu.

The actual death nell to these bills occurred in the Senate, but Frank was very vocal that the reason that he didn't want to tighten the restrictions when they needed to be tightened was because he didn't want homebuyers to be disqualified.

I haven't looked into all of the implications of this condo rule, but it stands to reason that they don't want to guarantee loans in a building where the lack of demand for the condos pushes the prices down. That sounds reasonable, but I can see his point about discouraging purchasers. I kind of think living in a big empty building would be appealing.

I respect Frank as a veteran statesman, but his hands are as bloody as anyone else's when it comes to the sub-prime lending crisis that helped with this meltdown.

It's also ironic that Dole and Sununu probably lost their seats because the Republicans were blamed in large part for the economic meltdown. At least they can sleep at night for having tried.

 Reply