Chutzpah!!

Barney Frank now says he wants criminal charges laid against “the people who caused the country’s financial meltdown.”

I’m guessing that Barney gets his shaves in a barber shop… he certainly doesn’t look much at the man in the mirror. From CNBC…

Earlier in the day, Frank, who is chairman of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, told reporters that he plans to move legislation this month on mortgage origination, predatory lending and credit cards.

Vowing to turn his focus from stabilizing the financial system to reshaping it, Frank said he will hold hearings to examine creating “a strongly empowered systemic risk regulator.”

Once upon a time, I seem to recall Barney telling us that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were “fundamentally sound.”  Now he’s out there telling us “happy endings are still possible despite economic mess.”

At the risk of playing with a loaded double entendre, I think Barney is a little too hung up on fairy tales…

Now, Barney isn’t exactly the most conventional market watcher.  A year ago, Barney was out there doing his regulatory dance, much in the same fashion a South Pacific cannibal, capering around the big black pot, saying:

“I am not talking about the holders of the loans taking a haircut,” the Massachusetts Democrat said. “I am talking about them having lobotomies.””

The obvious question — if the Cambridge head-hunter gets his way, either in his original model  or in the currently proposed judicial model, who in their right mind is going to want to write mortgage loans?  Be it a swing of Barney’s axe or the rap of a judge’s gavel, who would want to work in this market, if your investment disappears, not due to poor research or bad timing, but out of some misguided notion of the purpose of government?