Barney Frank in Davos

I write this as a Rep Frank constituent and supporter... (6.00 / 1)

I'd love for Rep Frank to explain to us exactly what he's up to, and why it's the best thing for us.

Trouble is, Rep Frank doesn't ahem excel at explaining complex issues to laypeople, nor does he seem to enjoy trying.

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by: stomv @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 20:55:12 PM CST

Indeed, that is why BMG is here to help (6.00 / 1)

No doubt there is an excellent reason specifically related to the 4th District that requires the Congressman to make a weekend trip to Switzerland for this important purpose. The expert bloggers here can help put it into words.

BMG: Reality-based commentary.

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by: Bob Neer @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 21:32:38 PM CST

[ Parent ]

easy... (0.00 / 0)

Regulatory Arbitrage. Today and tomorrow (Sunday/Monday) he's meeting with regulators from other countries to determine to which extent banking regulation among nations can be synchronized. So banks and hedge funds just won't pull up stakes and move to say, Dubai, Singapore or Hong Kong.

Later this week, this group will meet with the heads of banks to discuss what their regulated future will look like. Oh, to be a fly on the wall during that meeting . . . .

FYI, the bankers have already met to discuss their means of pushing back on any regulation. I suspect the bankers will be prepared to accept (though not without a fight) cosmetic rules designed to restore "confidence" in the banks.

Back on December 11, the House passed HR 4173 (I think, let me check...yup HR 4173). It's a pretty good bill as far as I can tell, though I haven't finished reading it.

In other words, as chairman of the House Banking subcommittee, the man is doing his job. I'm glad someone interested in regulating our our of control financial system is there sticking his nose in this meeting of these financial "princes".

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by: papicek @ Sun Jan 31, 2010 at 21:22:21 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Position explains it (6.00 / 1)

Frank is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. As such, it seems reasonable that he would attend a major international economic forum. What would you have him do, not attend, not meet face to face with major international figures, go to wsj.com to learn what happened there?  

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by: af @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 22:39:15 PM CST

Agree with af (6.00 / 1)

Frank is chair of a very important House committee, and his actions are important to all Americans.  That's more important right now than bring home pork to Fall River.

If his local constituents disagree, they are welcome to vote for another candidate this fall.

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by: bostonshepherd @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 04:44:46 AM CST

[ Parent ]

that's not it... (0.00 / 0)

I suspect I agree.  But I, like many voters, want Congressman Frank to explain that to us.  To explain to us that yes, he's got to go there to "do his homework" but that he's still fighting for our interests (not theirs), and here's how...

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by: stomv @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 07:00:59 AM CST

[ Parent ]

And perhaps explain how (4.00 / 1)

his twisted logic about internet gambling is a "libertarian" position, when in fact he wants to regulate - grow another bureaucracy and tax (not exactly a free-market approach) the industry.   Is this not another politician's desperate grab at easy revenues that are only sustainable through increased addicted players...as in targeting younger populations?

Maybe it's time for a Barney Watch Button on BMG that includes the superb tables of contributions to his campaign by the financial industry (hat tip JimC)....absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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by: HeartlandDem @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 07:28:02 AM CST

[ Parent ]

B-B-B-B-ut the Supremes just said this is right! (0.00 / 0)

The Supreme Court, in their instantly-famous Citizens United ruling, determined that the financial industry is just exercising its constitutionally-protected right to free speech.

Are you suggesting that this ruling is mistaken?

If it is wrong for Barney Frank to accept contributions from the finance industry, does the same standard apply to rightwing teabaggers like Scott Brown?

If it is wrong for Barney Frank to accept these contributions, then isn't it also wrong for the finance industry to offer them? Isn't this like arguing that married women who have affairs with married men "cheat", but their trysting partners do not? Or that teenage girls who get pregnant are of questionable moral character, but the teenage boys who do the deed are "just boys"?

But then why is the rightwing celebrating the Citizens United ruling (led by their current cheerleader, Justice Alito)? How can any populist tradition (from left or right) embrace this awful decision?

Or do you prefer a scenario where Barney Frank heroically rejects any "tainted" money, while another Scott Brown rightwing teabagger wins the campaign with tens of millions of anti-Frank ad buys contributed by "friendly" corporations?

Please forgive me, but it looks like the "logic" runs along the lines of "if I benefit, it's good. If somebody else benefits it's bad. If it hurts me, it's bad. If it hurts somebody else, it's good." Sort of a parallel construction to Reaganomics101.

Hmmmmm, where I have seen that before? I remember now, street corner hustlers in old New Orleans and old Times Square:

"Heads I win, tails you lose."

"If the Republicans will stop lying about the Democrats, the Democrats will stop telling the truth about the Republicans" -- Adlai Stevenson

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by: BrooklineTom @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 09:25:23 AM CST

[ Parent ]

The question is: (0.00 / 0)

In the scenario you outline, how much of a difference can one expect between the two candidates.

BMG: Reality-based commentary.

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by: Bob Neer @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 09:47:01 AM CST

[ Parent ]

So true (0.00 / 0)

This terrible decision may displace Dred Scott as the worst-ever Supreme Court ruling.

We can only hope that our democracy lasts long enough to undo it.


"If the Republicans will stop lying about the Democrats, the Democrats will stop telling the truth about the Republicans" -- Adlai Stevenson

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by: BrooklineTom @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 11:20:01 AM CST

[ Parent ]

I agree (0.00 / 0)

I just wish he would take questions from MA residents who do not live in his district.  He sends you back to your rep and, if you have a Financial Services Committee question, he sends you to the Committee.  I have Capuano as my Rep and he is very good, but I would like to be able to send Financial Services questions to Barney as a member of our state delegation and he (or more likely his staff) have not been responsive.

I have no issue with him attending the meeting.  It fits with his responsibilities and position in Congress.  I would have issues if he did not go.

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by: ConsEph @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 19:01:03 PM CST

[ Parent ]

This would be porblematic if... (0.00 / 0)

As part of BMG's "Helpful Hints for Leaders" series, please provide a convenient sound bite in the comments that Rep. Frank can use to explain to his constituents in Fall River (UPS was hiring seasonal driver assistants last November) and New Bedford (11.8 percent unemployment in November) how, precisely, he is advancing their interests at this meeting with top bankers in Switzerland on Saturday.

This would be problematic if bankers were the only other people there...  they are not.  The World Economic Forum  is a NON-PROFIT organization that tries to bring together economists, financiers, politicians, bureaucrats, intellectuals, journalists and activists from all over the world to discuss issues affecting the global market.  

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"Providing health care to the uninsured is a job killer, while not providing health care is merely a people killer....   Bonus: Job Openings!!"

--Stephen Colbert

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by: petr @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 08:38:51 AM CST

It's where the Rich, Powerful and Famous rub shoulders. (4.00 / 1)

It's irrelevant whether WEF is non-profit or not. I remember when John Kerry chose attending Davos in 2006 over staying home to focus on opposing Samuel Alito's nomination. Yes, that would be the same Sam Alito who rudely displayed his displeasure this week with the President's SOTU remarks. Kerry "cut short" his Davos visit to scurry back to DC to lead an unsuccessful filibuster effort - too little and too late. Davos seems to hold great allure for the Rich, Powerful and Famous.

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by: hubspoke @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 14:12:04 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Barney's Actually on a Secret Trade Mission to Switzerland.... (0.00 / 0)

Actually, Barney's meetings with these shameless international bankers in Davos, Switzerland are James Bondesque covers for a secret trade mission on behalf of the Obama administration.

Yes, Barney's actual mission in the money laundering, tax evasion capital of the world  is to persuade its political leaders to open up its domestic chocolates and candy market to Massachusetts confectionery makers like Schraftts...Ooops, Barney and the Obama administration forgot that the confectionery operations of Schraftts, which provided good jobs at good wages as Gov. Dukakis might say, ceased many years ago, victimized by low-wage, no-benefit foreign overseas competition, financed by the amoral banking industry.

Oh well, Barney, if you are just going to declare the jobs situation hopeless for your constituents, at least, please remember to bring home in your suitcases, along with another sell-out regulatory "compromise" brokered with your new friends from the banking and high finance worlds, enough Swiss chocolates and candy to feed your (literally) hungry constituents of New Bedford and Fall River. For if you  truly believe, Congressman Frank, Congress cannot do anything more in the way of a second stimulus or targeted small business tax cuts to stimulate public and private jobs for the needy constituents of the Fourth Congressional District, then, feel free to royally proclaim upon your eventual return to the District, "Let them eat Godiva chocolates!"

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by: eddiecoyle @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 16:53:05 PM CST

After the snark, what is your proposal? (6.00 / 3)

There is a reason why Schrafft's went away. Are you forgetting that Schraftt's Candy was sold to Helme Products in 1967, and ceased operations in 1981? Are you seriously arguing that candy has been "victimized" by "low-wage, no-benefit foreign overseas (sic) competition"? Do you think candy is made by legions of poor third-world laborers working in sweatshops?  Seriously?

Was it candy companies who built out the Middlesex Turnpike from Burlington to Chelmsford? Do you think that "low-wage, no-benefit foreign overseas competition" killed local high-tech? If so, you'd better think again.

Do you really want to discuss all the former employers who have failed in the last twenty nine years, and why they failed? How many jobs did Digital Equipment Corporation, Raytheon, and Polaroid bring to the region, compared to Schrafft's?

Massachusetts benefited enormously while a generation of highly-skilled highly-paid computer industry professionals made a boatload of money for their investors — and did so by creating the technology that put industrial-era operations like Schraftt's out of business.

Anybody with any insight at all knew that the mainstay of Polaroid Corporation was dead as soon as it was clear that digital imagery would became affordable to the consumer market. Was it "low-wage, no-benefit foreign overseas competition" that kept Polaroid locked in a dead-end business with a dead-end technology for more than a decade?

Good grief, man, my very first startup, in 1983, had senior engineering management that saw the handwriting on the wall and left Polaroid.

And why the snark about Godiva chocolates? They are, after all, a European company who began American operations in 1966 (just a year before Schrafft's sold out), and now locate their world headquarters in Manhattan. Aren't they a success story for American workers?

Of all the possible targets for totally appropriate anger, resentment, hostility, and cynicism, it seems to me that Barney Frank is near the bottom of the list. Talk about biting your nose to spite your face. If you want to direct your ire about lost jobs in Massachusetts, I strongly encourage you to take a good hard look at the Boston investment and venture capital community. Do you know anyone who's raised money in Boston in the last two years (for anything except a $15M biotech startup that employs seven workers)? How about the last 29? How many successful Massachusetts IPOs have there been since the spectacular success of Mitch Kapor with Lotus in 1983? How does that compare with the Bay Area?

Why do you think that the smart US money is now centered in San Francisco rather than Boston? Do you really blame Barney Frank for that?

Who would you rather see be the chair of the House Banking and Finance committee? I promise you that it won't be a freshman Rep from MA. Would you prefer a Republican?

Come ON, Eddie, think!

"If the Republicans will stop lying about the Democrats, the Democrats will stop telling the truth about the Republicans" -- Adlai Stevenson

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by: BrooklineTom @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 17:57:31 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I've thought about your question and here's my response (0.00 / 0)

I would rather have Maxine Waters as Chair of the House Banking and Finance Committee because then I could feel some assurance that my limited personal assets and economic interests as a bank depositor and American taxpayer were being protected from the reckless and foolish greed of international banks/finance companies by a politician committed to stricter, independent oversight of the banks' lending and investment practices and the implementation of new leverage restrictions on the banking/finance industries.

Recent news reports make it apparent that Barney (D-Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) is on the verge of developing a House bill that will fail to include and independent consumer-oriented banking regulator, mandate new asset and leverage requirements for banks, or reimpose some of the necessary firewall restrictions of the Glass-Steagall Act on these banking/finance conglomerates. Maybe, after meeting with these banking plutocrats, Barney will reconsider his recent European tryst with representatives big banks and financial institutions and return to his previous role as a tenacious progressive, bull dog reformer. I doubt that will be the case because Barney's ever expanding ego is now tied to passing "compromise legislation" that the banking industry can accept, if not wholeheartedly embrace.

Of course, Barney's not the only formerly liberal Democrat to have been captured by the banking/financial/insurance lobbies in D.C. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Countrywide Financial) could do all of us a favor and begin his formal post-Senatorial insurance lobbying career several months earlier than he had intended and just resign from the Senate tonight. Gee, I can't wait to see the diluted piece of milquetoast crap legislation that emerges from Dodd's negotiations with ranking Republican member Sen. Richard Shelby from Alabama to produce a "compromise" Senate "financial reform" bill.

I am going to defer to your clearly superior knowledge of the roles played by venture capitalists and local banks in the rise and fall of the Mass. high tech industry in the 1980s and 1990s.

However, I think your summary of the economic forces that led to the downfall of Schrafft's candy company, its successor, and the domestic confectionery business is somewhat misleading. My understanding is that the company that bought Schraffts closed all of its domestic confectionery factories a little over a decade after it bought Schrafft's. I would argue that unfair foreign competition from large conglomerates like Nestle, which has had factories in many less developed countries around the world for many years, played a significant role in the demise of small and medium size candy companies in the United States. If the untamed forces of globalization could nearly kill off GM and Chrysler twenty years later, how could Schrafft's or its corporate successor hope to remain in business in Sullivan Square, Herald Square, or Any Town Square for a long-term duration?    

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by: eddiecoyle @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 21:11:24 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Why do you say "unfair"? (0.00 / 0)

Was the collapse of GM, Ford and Chrysler the result of "unfair" foreign competition? Unfair in what way? Because foreign governments subsidized research, health care, and perhaps housing? It seems to me that GM, Ford and Chrysler collapsed because they made lousy vehicles that nobody wanted to buy. I'm reminded of the similar complaints during 1982 while I lived in Pittsburgh, where the steel industry was collapsing. The finger-pointing between labor and management is irrelevant — the overseas companies, one way or another, delivered a superior product at a compellingly affordable price.

If you have evidence of what you mean by "unfair foreign competition", I'm interested. What I see on the table so far, though, is that a conservative, backwards, and labor-intensive American candy industry was taken to the cleaners by radical, forward-thinking, and highly-automated overseas competitors (using, by the way, technology that other sectors of the American economy profited handsomely from by supplying to those foreign competitors). Chocolate is, after all, the province of the Swiss — is there some natural law that says American chocolate ought to be better? Wasn't America, at one time, the "unfair foreign competition" that took down the Swiss candy companies?

For decades, the UK tried to prop up British Leyland and the UK auto industry through subsidies, "buy British" jawboning, and moral persuasion. It was miserably unsuccessful. I don't know any more about Barney Frank's proposals than you do, but I don't see anything substantive from Maxine Waters that promises any better.

I think the sad truth is just as you say — there is no way that Schrafft's or its corporate successor could hope to remain in Sullivan Square, Herald Square or anywhere else for a long-term duration. As I see it, that unfortunate reality has nothing to do with who is or is not chairman of the House Banking and Finance committee, and everything to do with the assumption that candy is something we buy in three pound bags for a dollar (or whatever) at our local Stop & Shop.

"If the Republicans will stop lying about the Democrats, the Democrats will stop telling the truth about the Republicans" -- Adlai Stevenson

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by: BrooklineTom @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 23:25:33 PM CST

[ Parent ]

actually... (0.00 / 0)

your contention that Frank s on his way to failing to create the Consumer Finance Protection Agency is untrue. Frank's bill, HR 4173 (which he sponsored, no co-sponsors but which was passed in the House last December 11) does in fact contain such a provision.

Barney Frank crafted the House's stab at financial reform, and it's a pretty good bill. Criticize the guy if you like, but as far as I can tell, he's doing a damned good job.

Whether those prima donnas retards in the Senate can come up with something as good is something I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for.

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by: papicek @ Sun Jan 31, 2010 at 21:46:04 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Oh no, here we go again (0.00 / 0)

Did you have to spoil an otherwise fine comment with the boorish slur in your last line? Surely you can find other insults that aren't so offensive.

Come on, guys, figure it out.

"If the Republicans will stop lying about the Democrats, the Democrats will stop telling the truth about the Republicans" -- Adlai Stevenson

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by: BrooklineTom @ Mon Feb 01, 2010 at 06:16:21 AM CST

[ Parent ]

on boorishness... (0.00 / 0)

Whatever it takes to get the point across. What you regard as boorish, I see as pithy.

::

In what way, may I ask, is playing gimme-me-more politics with your administration's first major policy initiative sane?

Is it good governance? Is is smart politics?

When one works hard and donates more than one can afford (that would be me) to get these guys elected, one might appreciate i, if they'd do a good enough job to make it possible to do the so again.

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by: papicek @ Mon Feb 01, 2010 at 10:18:32 AM CST

[ Parent ]

But it INTERFERES with your point (0.00 / 0)

Look, call them (the wimps in the Senate) "prima donnas". Call them "wimps". Call them "bozos". Call them "jerks". Even better, call them "dinos" or "demagogues" or both, because both happen to be true.

I support the point you're trying to make. I agree with you that Barney Frank put forward a pretty good bill, and I think the attack on him in this thread is way out of line.

I just wish you'd chosen a "pithy" comment that wasn't so offensive to so many people who, like me, otherwise agree with you.

"If the Republicans will stop lying about the Democrats, the Democrats will stop telling the truth about the Republicans" -- Adlai Stevenson

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by: BrooklineTom @ Mon Feb 01, 2010 at 21:54:02 PM CST

[ Parent ]