Barney, Don’t Be A Hero

The very first – and we mean the very first – article that we wrote after the Bush administration proposed a socialist solution to America’s economic crisis was entitled “No Golden Parachutes.”

We also exposed South Carolina’s most expensive “golden parachute,” prompting Gov. Mark Sanford to request an investigation by the U.S. Treasury.

Simply put, we don’t believe that people who colossally screw up should get paid bonuses – particularly not with taxpayer money, and particularly not with taxpayer money that’s going straight into a growing national debt that will hamstring America for years to come.

Democratic Rep. Barney Frank – who chairs the House Financial Services Committee – agrees with us, which is why he’s currently trying to determine if millions of dollars in bonuses paid to AIG executives is recoverable.

From Reuters:

“We need to find out whether these bonuses are legally recoverable,” Frank, a Democrat, told the “Fox News Sunday” program, adding that the timing of the company’s commitment to make the awards to its employees was important.

Embattled insurer AIG, which has received three government bailouts totaling $180 billion, had promised to pay about $1 billion in retention bonuses over a period of several years, half of which has already been paid.

Great … wonderful … at least until you consider the source.

More than any other politician in America, Barney Frank is responsible for the economic disaster we find ourselves in today.

Well, him and the executives whose bonuses he now wants to reclaim.

As we wrote before Bush’s “Bailout I” had even been announced, it was the collapse of the sub-prime lending market due to an avalanche of politically-correct lending that led directly to the global economic crisis.

Government policies created – and in many cases compelled companies to absorb – trillions of dollars in toxic debt, although obviously the corporations who have been bailed out certainly deserve their fair share of the blame.

And deserve to be bankrupt, not bankrolling taxpayer billions.

Yet while many tried to reform government-sponsored mortgage behemoths Fannie and Freddie back when there was still time, Frank wouldn’t hear of it – a pattern of obstruction that he has pursued dating back to 1992.

In 2000, after the Clinton administration passed new regulations pumping $2.4 trillion in “mortgages for affordable housing” through Fannie and Freddie, Frank refused to reform the agencies that would be responsible for managing the soon-to-be “toxic” debt.

“There’s no federal liability there whatsoever,” Frank said at the time.

He blocked reform again in 2002, and again a year later when Fannie and Freddie’s balance sheets were shown to be billions out of whack.

“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” Frank famously said during the last round of reform talks four years ago. “The more people exaggerate these problems … the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Why was Frank so recalcitrantly opposed to fixing Fannie and Freddie?

Turns out he was not only raking in campaign contributions from both bureaucracies, but he was also engaged in a homosexual relationship with a Fannie executive.

Nice.

Barney Frank shouldn’t be on TV right now, he should be in jail – which let’s face it, he’d probably enjoy more than most people.

We just think it’s amazing that a guy who played such an integral role in creating this crisis continues to act like he’s on the cutting edge of solving it.

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