Barney Frank Just Ripped You Off

From: Jim J.

Sent: May 27, 2012

To: undisclosed recipients

Subject: Fw: Barney Frank Just Ripped You Off

Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff is a former American businessman, stockbroker, investment advisor, and financier. He is the former non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, and the admitted operator of a Ponzi scheme that is considered to be the largest financial fraud in U.S. history.

In March 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal felonies and admitted to turning his wealth management business into a massive Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of investors of billions of dollars. Madoff said he began the Ponzi scheme in the early 1990s. However, federal investigators believe the fraud began as early as the 1970s, and those charged with recovering the missing money believe the investment operation may never have been legitimate. The amount missing from client accounts, including fabricated gains, was almost $65 billion. The court-appointed trustee estimated actual losses to investors of $18 billion. On June 29, 2009, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison, the maximum allowed.

The long and short of it is this – private citizen Bernie Madoff ripped some people off with his Ponzi scheme and went to prison. Barney Frank (D) Congressman from Mass. And Chris Dodd (D) Senator from Conn. pushed, propped-up, promoted, persuaded, prompted, and pleaded for FannieMae and FreddieMac. They were behind other schemes costing America untold billions of dollars. Why aren’t they in prison?
Barney Frank Just Ripped You Off

John Ransom
I just finished reading Brian Sullivan’s Reform battles rollback as Romney pledges to repeal Obama's financial regulations regarding the differences between Romney and Obama on the financial services regulations known as Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley. Sullivan’s piece is mostly what you would expect from a mainstream media outlet.

It’s a topical check list of “On the one hand Romney wants, on the other hand Obama says…” that is just a series of campaign infomercials disguised as balanced analysis.

And it illustrates what’s really wrong with the battle over policy issues today, especially in Washington.

Because what’s more important than the “he said, she said” narrative that tries to balance campaign talking points, is the question: Does legislation that comes out of Congress work as it was supposed to work? It seems to be a question singularly lacking when proposing legislation in Washington, D.C.

That’s because unfortunately, the answer to the question is often- maybe even usually- “no.” And the bigger the piece of legislation, the more divorced it becomes from delivering results.

Obamacare won’t lower costs; No Child Left Behind won’t makes schools better; Cap and Trade won’t give you “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal;” and Dodd-Frank hasn’t made our financial system any sounder than it was before.

In fact, Dodd-Frank has actually made the process worse, like the other examples I cited above.

That’s because guys like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd are more interested in wielding a lead pipe when it comes to legislation than they are in actually solving problems. The lead pipe is very useful when it comes to raising money.

Solving problems? Nobody in D.C. pays for that.