On May 20th, Congressman Barney Frank (a promoter of the Community Reinvestment Act, a promoter of increased Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exposure to risky mortgages - in other words, he helped cause the financial crisis) again denied that he pushed for increased home ownership. He did this most recently yesterday on CNBC but has a history over the last couple of years of denying his culpability.Here we go again.
Let's read (or listen to) his own words from 2005:
Barney Frank June 27, 2005 - House Floor
"We have, I think, an excessive degree of concern right now about home ownership and it's role in the economy. Obviously speculation is never a good thing. But those who argue that housing prices are now at the point of a bubble seem to me to be missing a very important point. Unlike previous examples we have had where substantial excessive inflation of prices later caused some problems. We are talking here about an entity, home ownership, homes, where there is not the degree of leverage that we have seen elsewhere. This is not the dot com situation. We had problems with people having invested in business plans for which there was no reality, with people building fiber optic cable for which there was no need. Homes that are occupied may see an ebb and flow in the price at a certain percentage level but you're not going to see a collapse that you see when people talk about a bubble. So those of us on our committee in particular will continue to push toward home ownership."
He also had denied pushing for increased home ownership on the Daily Show last year.
Ed Lasky
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