Rep. Barney Frank

Rep. Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services, blames racist Republicans for the credit panic. Frank says, "let's be honest: (why do politicians keep saying "let's be honest"? Is it because they aren't honest, so they can remind us of a fact we already know?) "The fact that some poor people are black doesn't hurt them either from their standpoint."

Black people aren't at the root of this mess. This mess is, largely in part, the relaxing of lending standards so as to make it easy for poor and minority borrowers to get mortgages. This in turn created incentives for banks to make bad loans, many of which were "bundled up" and sold with the good loans and which the leading buyer was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

There is nothing wrong with lending to poor and minorities. However. these borrower, like in Australia, must have the means to PAY BACK THESE LOANS AS THEY COME DUE AND PAY BACK IN A TIMELY FASHION.

No one in the private sector except the greedy and badly managed few make such foolish loans.

Everyone who was involved in the "pyramid scheme" is desperately trying to separate the good credit from the fair, from the bad, and the very bad. In the meantime we must trust our government and men like Frank and Dodd to save the ones that have value and should be saved?

Good luck to the country but, hey, we voted these people into office.

It is no secret that Barney Frank had a live-in relationships with one of the male executives of one of these lending entities.

Sad, but interesting.