So Slobbering Barney Frank finally admitted helping Herb Moses get a job at Fannie Mae during the early 1990s.  Who was Herb Moses?  Hunky Herb was Barney’s boyfriend at the time.  Why does it matter?  Because Barney Frank was on the committee that regulated Fannie Mae at the time he helped his lover get the job … and then for the next few years when Herb Moses was one of the Fannie Mae executives pushing the very Fannie Mae loan guarantee programs that led to our housing and mortgage crisis, while escaping rigorous oversight from Congress.  A conflict of interest?  Hell ya!  But not according to Slobbering Barney Frank.  He says, “If it is (a conflict of interest), then much of Washington is involved (in conflicts).  It is a common thing in Washington for members of Congress to have spouses work for the federal government. There is no rule against it at all.”

Working for the federal government, fine.  But serving on the Congressional committee that oversees your lover’s job?  In 2003, the Bush administration proposed altering the regulation of GSEs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Barney Frank had this to say at a hearing of the Financial Services Committee on the subject:

I want to begin by saying that I am glad to consider the legislation, but I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two government sponsored enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. We have recently had an accounting problem with Freddie Mac that has led to people being dismissed, as appears to be appropriate. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury….

Now, we have got a system that I think has worked very well to help housing. The high cost of housing is one of the great social bombs of this country. I would rank it second to the inadequacy of our health delivery system as a problem that afflicts many, many Americans. We have gotten recent reports about the difficulty here.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have played a very useful role in helping make housing more affordable, both in general through leveraging the mortgage market, and in particular, they have a mission that this Congress has given them in return for some of the arrangements which are of some benefit to them to focus on affordable housing, and that is what I am concerned about here. I believe that we, as the Federal Government, have probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing and to set reasonable goals. I worry frankly that there is a tension here.

The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disastrous scenarios. And even if there were a problem, the Federal Government doesn't bail them out. But the more pressure there is there, then the less I think we see in terms of affordable housing.

Ouch, Barney.

Remember, though … you are supposed to believe that it was Wall Street greed that caused the financial crisis.  A congressman protecting the job of his lover couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with it ---- even if he did manage to block reform.