Talk:Barney Frank/Archive 6

No Longer One of the Most Powerful
It seems that Rep. Frank has lost his position of chairman of the powerful U.S. House Financial Services Committee following the GOP sweep of Congress, should that be noted now or after the new Congress takes over?

http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1303490&position=emailed

Seniortrend (talk) 01:28, 17 December 2010 (UTC)


 * He's still chairman until the new Congress is sworn in. —Designate (talk) 03:11, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Public Perception
Now that I've gone through the archives, I have noticed how this section has been whitewashed of all criticism for the fannie mae/freddy mac bubble that the public (bill o'reilly et. al) have blamed him for.Senior Trend (talk) 03:11, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Bill O'Reilly is not the public. He's a Fox operative.  The accusations against Frank in connection with the financial crisis were politically motivated criticisms, part of the usual tug of war in Washington.  If the fact that they were made can be sourced to neutral publications of due weight as being of biographical importance, it might make some sense to mention them.  Please don't come to Wikipedia with accusations of whitewashing - that rarely leads to productive collaboration.  I have reverted the addition of the "POV" tag, which appears to be what editors sometimes call "drive by tagging", and also restored the mention of Frank as one of the most powerful members of congress, something that was amply sourced and thoroughly discussed.  I've put it in the past tense and attributed a date so it is will not be stale, as you point out.  If you have any other specific, sourced changes you wish to propose for the article, please feel free. - Wikidemon (talk) 03:18, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I see the matter is covered at some length in a more appropriate section, "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac". - Wikidemon (talk) 03:28, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * What do you mean when you say "Fox operative". Besides, this sections about Public Perception and the Factor reaches out to more Americans than the NY Times. Also,  from The Wall Street Journal which again reaches out to more of the public than any source listed in that section. What I want added to all that is that there are a lot of people who blame him for fannie/freddy crisis, which all happened under his watch Senior Trend (talk) 09:43, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the courteous reply. Those two are opinion pieces.  They, along with Bill O'Reilly, prove the fact that some prominent writers have opined that Frank is among those responsible for the problem.  Conservative editorialists regularly bash liberal people and things.  There has to be something more, third party sourcing to say it matters and put it in context in terms of Frank's life story.  If a Wall Street Journal news piece, as opposed to their editorial page, says that Frank is often blamed, has come under scrutiny, has been accused, etc., that lends weight to it.  I know we've had the discussion a number of times on this page about how to cover Frank's relationship to the banking mess, although I didn't personally participate much in that discussion.  There is already a section on it, as I said.  If we can source it reliably, it might be worth adding a summary sentence to the top or bottom, or if it really is a matter of his public perception more than his actual actions, perhaps in that section.  I'm not averse to it, I'm just looking for sources that aren't opinion pieces.  - Wikidemon (talk) 04:42, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh Wikidemon
Wikidemon,

I have to say your own Non-NPOV sentiments are clearly visible in your responses to Senior Trend.

Aside from the fact that you twice assert the complaints against Congressman Frank regarding his role in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac disasters were "politically motivated" and part of "Conservative editorialists regularly bashing liberal people" without saying the same thing of liberals or simply that political parties do such things to each other, you point out the issue raised by Senior Trend can be addressed if such allegations can be "...sourced to neutral publications of due weight," that "There has to be something more, third party sourcing..." and "If a Wall Street Journal news piece, as opposed to their editorial page, says that Frank is often blamed..." then these can be considered worthy of inclusion.

However, you so far haven't taken any umbrage with the inclusion of part of an op-ed piece from the Wall Street Journal which gushes praise for Congressman Frank, the one by Lawrence B. Lindsey who claims Mr. Frank held the apparently entirely unique position of being "the only politician" Mr. Lindsey knew "...who has argued that we needed tighter rules that intentionally produce fewer homeowners and more renters" (I take it Mr. Lindsey didn't know that many politicians). This despite the fact Mr. Lindsey's statement flies in the face of the famous "Rolling of the Dice" quote by Congressman Frank himself, where he clearly takes pride in preventing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from coming under the "...same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision." IOW, reform.

Why are parts of op-eds which champion and praise Mr. Frank allowed when parts of op-eds which find fault with him are not? Why do you demand a higher standard to report legitimate concerns regarding Mr. Frank's role in the collapse of FM/FM than you do about reports which, on the face of it at minimum, seem to run counter to the evidence?

I seem to recall Congressman Frank's response to requests from the Bush Administration to facilitate the transfer of oversight of FM/FM away from Congress and his committee, as being met with a "door being slammed in the face" of the Administration (by Frank). I also recall virtually the same thing being reported when Sen. John McCain also attempted to obtain Mr. Frank's cooperation on issues related to FM/FM's apparently unwise business practices, practices which were the brainchild of Mr. Frank's long-time ex-lover, the senior executive at FM/FM, Assistant Director for Product Initiatives Herb Moses (or both, though that we may never know).

Mr. Frank already had plenty of reasons to be concerned his role in the collapse of FM/FM would come under scrutiny because his love affair with Mr. Moses coincided with his seat on the House Banking Committee, which held jurisdiction over FM/FM at the time. On that matter, Mr. Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute (see, another source), said "He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane? If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have - or at least what’s not in the stock market - that this would be considered germane. But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard." Frank had already demonstrated his willingness to use his elected office for personal reasons, so to blithely believe he would ensure conflicts of interest were not going to occur seems a stretch, to say the very least.

Knowing as we all do the distinct disdain Mr. Frank has long held for Conservatives, and especially for Christian Conservatives holding public office, it should come as zero surprise he wasn't about to cooperate with a presidency which saw very real problems with his ex-lover's operations while the two were still known to have remained close friends after their break-up. For example, how believable is it when he says "it was Bush who started to push Fannie and Freddie into subprime mortgages" when his ex-lover and close friend was Assistant Director for (duh!) "Product Initiatives" at FM/FM at exactly the time these mortgages started to show up? The National Mortgage News (hey, another source) said that Herb Moses "helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs." In 1991, the same year Mr. Moses started his job at Fannie Mae, the Boston Globe (gosh, yet another source) reported that Barney Frank pushed the agency to "loosen regulations" on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, "even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively." Former president Clinton (I know, this one's hard to swallow, but he did say these things so he is another source) tried to enact a new regulation on Fannie Mae while he was president, and it is Clinton himself who said that Barney Frank was most responsible for preventing it from becoming a reality (Clinton also criticized other Democrats for what amounted to aiding and abetting this resistance to badly needed reform).

I also obtained this quote (from thepoliticalguide.com - another source, no less reputable than some of the sources used already and allowed to remain - and a heck of a lot less biased than some allowed to remain) which was not an Op-Ed, but an article on Mr. Frank's legislative activities. "In 2003, Congressman Frank (who was the senior Democrat on the Committee) [the then House Banking Committee, its name was later changed to the "House Financial Services Committee"] aggressively campaigned to resist regulation attempted by the Bush administration to monitor and curtail the very lending which Congressman Frank and others blamed for the collapse."

And this: "Business Week (a highly regarded source) reported in its Nov. 14, 1994, issue that Fannie Mae called on [Rep.] Frank to exert his influence against a Housing & Urban Development proposal that would force the GSE to focus on minority and low-income buyers and police bias by lenders regardless of their location. Fannie Mae opposed HUD on the issue because it claimed doing so would “ignore the urban middle class.” Imagine that - a Democrat opposed to aid for minorities. Sounds like the Democrats of this nation right on up to 1964, when they simply stole what had been a keystone Republican agenda for well more than 100 years; the abolishment of slavery, a war to end slavery, civil rights for freed slaves and civil rights for all minorities from then on, every single one of which originated with Republicans since well before the U.S. Civil War, and all of which had been opposed by Democrats since before the U.S. Civil War. Fast forward to 1964 and the Democrats discover a new strategy; using Tax Payer Dollars to literally buy votes, first using millions, then billions and now trillions of tax dollars to create a dependent-entitlement welfare class instead of an American class of proud, hard-working and successful non-whites enjoying full civil liberties protection. That has always been the Republican goal and all you need do is look up the legislative history of Congress to prove it to yourself. Just be sure and go back to before the U.S. Civil War. (Why do Democrats think Tax Payer Dollars grow on trees in infinite numbers, instead of the hard-earned, cold cash that Tax Payer Dollars actually are??? Oh, I almost forgot – to buy votes. Must be a “Party-First” philosophy instead of a “Nation-First” philosophy. Boy, that kinda stinks, doesn't it? Actually, now that I think about it - for about a tenth of a nanosecond - it REALLY stinks.)

On May 27, 2011, Boston.com (hardly a new kid on the block) reported "Representative Barney Frank, who for more than two decades has been a member of the House committee charged with oversight of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, acknowledged yesterday that he recommended his live-in companion for a job at one of the housing agencies in the early 1990s at the same time Congress was writing legislation to improve oversight of the agency" A-N-D "The [Boston] Globe reported last fall that Frank, after becoming ranking member of the Financial Services Committee in 2003, missed warning signs that Fannie and Freddie were underwriting risky loans that could threaten their solvency. He told the Globe that he had been wearing ideological blinders — that he believed criticism of the agencies was motivated by partisanship and [were] without merit. Fannie and Freddie nearly collapsed in 2008, forcing the federal government to buy $150 billion worth of stock in the enterprises and $1.36 trillion worth of mortgage-backed securities." Thanks Barney. Thank you for being SO PERSONALLY JADED you inflicted upon this great nation a truly crippling, mind-numbing ONE AND A HALF TRILLION DOLLARS in actual, net damage. Thanks a bunch, pal.

The "without merit" part is particularly revealing, because it shows to anyone with even minimal common sense that Frank's seething hatred for the "Christian Conservative-in-Chief" was so great, so overwhelming and so ingrained - very much like that of Pelosi's and so many other far-leftist loons ('loons' because they refuse to believe the truth if told to them by a member of the right) - that it set this country on a path to almost total ruin (and if Obama has his way, he will complete the job Frank unwittingly, but very, very immaturely, naively and angrily started - with slamming doors in people's faces). As this revelation came out LAST FALL, why is it NOT MENTIONED in this "article" about Barney Frank? There have been many edits since last fall. What reason could the editors have for omitting and keeping out this absolute BLOCK BUSTER of an admission?! Surely, surely, the editors here are fair-minded, unbiased, non-partisan professionals who seek to develop a top-quality product, right? They are not nearly so immature as to let what Frank calls HIS "Blinders" to interfere with their work to prevent an overt POV article on the congressman from "Massachusetts's(sic) 4th congressional district," are they?? (Did you brainiacs here catch that there is no extra "s" after Massachusetts?)

I don't edit Wiki articles. At least not yet. But I do try and convey to those who do that the bias is obvious and harmful to Wikipedia in the eyes of the rest of the world. This article is clearly biased, and this last fact makes the bias blatant, so patently blatant that the article actually sucks. Your treatment of Senior Trend also was not fair, not in light of the article as it stands and developments going back to last fall, let alone all the evidence piling up since 2003.

The fact is, had oversight been transferred as desired by the Bush Administration way back in 2003 (during the time Mr. Frank claims Republicans were not the least bit interested in reform at FM/FM), things may very well have turned out differently. But thanks to his stupid, inane and hate-filled attitudes towards his fellow man, we will spend the rest of our natural lives paying dearly, as well as our children for their entire lifetimes, and their children and maybe even their children. Maybe we all need to take a cue from Barney: view liberals they way they view conservatives, as not worth the time of day. At least those who refuse to believe the truth simply because it comes from a conservative. They obviously do not view “conservatives” as fellow human beings with as much brains as they have any day. More so if you use the new “Emotional I.Q” school of thought on intelligence.

In closing, I'd like to add that when you choose for your sources such entities as Salon, the NYT, TIME, The New Yorker, MSNBC (you were not serious, were you?) Media Matters (I guess you were serious), The Villager, and biographies written by Jewish liberals about fellow Jewish liberals, you will NOT end up with a NPOV article. Just isn't going to happen. Oh, and I think you owe Senior Trend a big, fat apology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.166.126.122 (talk) 12:16, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Location of Steve Gobie information?
Simple question here. Why is all the information about Frank's relationship with Steve Gobie under "Tenure" and not under "Personal Life"? In describing his relationships, the "Personal Life" section jumps from his last relationship with a woman, to his coming out in 1987, to his long-term relationship with Herb Moses from 1991 to 1998. Seems like the relationship with Steve Gobie should be mentioned here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.191.166.202 (talk) 19:18, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 7 March 2013
The entire first paragraph listed under the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac header should be STRICKEN from the Wikipedia article, due to incorrect citations and misstatements of fact.

The first part of the paragraph reads:

''In 2003, while the ranking minority member on the Financial Services Committee, Frank opposed a Bush administration proposal, in response to accounting scandals, for transferring oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from Congress and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to a new agency that would be created within the Treasury Department. The proposal, supported by the head of Fannie Mae, reflected the administration's belief that Congress "neither has the tools, nor the stature" for adequate oversight. Frank stated, "These two entities ...are not facing any kind of financial crisis ... The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."[47]'' The first sentence of the above paragraph is refuted by the third paragraph in the Wikipedia article under the same heading, starting with the words “In 2009, Frank responded…”, which gives a detailed description of  Frank’s efforts in support of the regulation of Fannie & Freddie, not, as stated in the above paragraph, of his efforts to oppose it. These efforts have been substantiated by Mike Oxley (R-OH), former Chairman of the Financial Services Committee, who is cited in Paragraph 3. Further, the inclusion of citation 47 is misleading. Citation 47 does not corroborate Frank’s opposition, it merely states that a new agency would have been created and makes no mention of Frank’s words quoted above. (See Citation 47: Labaton, Stephen (September 11, 2003). "New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 05 2008. Retrieved October 5, 2008.)

The second part of the paragraph reads:

In 2003, Frank also stated what has been called his "famous dice roll":[48] "I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness [in the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] that we have in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidised housing."[49]

The problem is that Frank’s ‘famous “dice roll”’ quotation is a fabrication. Both Citation 48 and Citation 49 selectively quote and misquote from the Fannie Mae hearing of September, 2003. (See Citation 48 "The Fannie Mae Dice Roll Continues". The Wall Street Journal. November 11, 2009. & Citation 49. Dominic Lawson (October 10, 2008). "Don't bank on the Government". The Independent (London).)

The full and correct quote from the hearing, House Committee on Financial Services, The Regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Sep 25, 2003, CSPAN archives at http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/178357-1 is as follows:

''I don’t want Fannie and Freddie to be just another bank. If they weren’t gonna do more than another bank would, because they have so many advantages, then we don’t need them. And so therefore I do think, I don’t want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that you have in OTC and OTS. I want to load the dice a little bit more in this situation towards, towards subsidized housing.''

Reading the quote in context, i.e, by including the two additional introductory sentences and by correctly quoting “load” -- entirely changes the meaning from what is presently posted and underlines the importance of  not repeating the canard that Frank wanted to “roll” the dice. There is a major difference between the incorrect implication that Frank was willing to take chances with Fannie & Freddie, and by extension, with the economy as a whole, versus his stated intention—which the rest of his hearing testimony corroborates-- that these GSE’s should offer the taxpayer more than what we expect of  regular banks in return for their special status as governmentally guaranteed entities.

The last part of the Paragraph reads:

In July 2008, Frank said in an [sic] CNBC interview, "I think this is a case where Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, that they are not in danger of going under. They’re not the best investments these days from the long-term standpoint going back. I think they are in good shape going forward."[50]

While this is factually accurate, without the prior misstatements it carries little weight. If, however, this one quote from CNBC does remain, the following sentence should be added:

''Frank was not alone in his thinking. In March of 2008, OFHEO (the Office of Federal Housing Oversight) issued a statement that “These companies [Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac] are safe and sound, and …they continue to be safe and sound.”’ [cited in McLean, Bethany and Nocera, Joe, All the Devils are Here, 2010, 2011, Portfolio/Penguin, p.348]''

Polituks (talk) 23:45, 7 March 2013 (UTC) Polituks (talk) 15:27, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. Done-- Laun  chba  ller  17:05, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

A Frank Suggestion
Can anyone send me the text of the Boston Herald-American article, "A Frank Suggestion: Hookers in the Financial District"? It's cited as a source in both this article and the one on the Combat Zone. Among other things, I'd like to see exactly what it says, if anything, about George W. Romney. --Rosekelleher (talk) 22:43, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

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Why the Devil is Frank described as a "former politician"? Former congressman, yes; former politician, no
Frank is not retired, for god's sake. See here; he's chair of a DNC committee which Sanders wants to remove him from according to this article. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/us/politics/democratic-nomination-bernie-sanders.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Ergo, Frank is not a "former politician." Please! Eminent Jurist (talk) 12:44, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Furthermore, in sentence 4, you state: "Frank, a resident of Newton, Massachusetts, is considered the most prominent gay politician in the United States.[2]"

One cannot be a former politician and a current politician simultaneously. At least maintain consistency!Eminent Jurist (talk) 12:48, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

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