The inmates running the Congressional asylum

So yesterday we had the spectacle of the House Financial Services committee, chaired by that nauseating little man Barney Frank, grandstanding and grilling the heads of the big banks about why they aren’t doing what Congress supposedly thought they were going to do with hundreds of billions in financing that was extended to them with virtually no strings attached. Here are a few of the really piercing, salient questions and comments that came out of this circus…

"You come to us today on your bicycles, after buying Girl Scout cookies and helping out Mother Teresa, telling us: 'We're sorry. We won't do it again,' "said Rep. Michael Capuano (D., Mass.). "America doesn't trust you anymore."

"This country is in a recession headed for a Depression," said Rep. Walter Jones (R., N.C.). "Why can't you do something for them?" he asked, referring to consumers.

Great moments in American political discourse, one and all! Some needs to tell Rep. Capuano that Mother Theresa died a number of years ago.

It was very effective as well. Wow, you can feel the credit markets loosening up already! Boy, with any luck the banks and other lending institutions will go right back to making bad loans so that the taxpayers can eat those as well! How can you have people on a Congressional financial services committee that are so embarrassingly clueless about financial services? Barney Frank chairs this committee and setting aside his distasteful personal life (like paying a male prostitute/pimp for sex while serving in Congress), he has been in Congress since 1981. 28 years. Prior to that he worked in a bunch of other positions in government and academia. As far as I can tell he has never had a real job in the private sector. He opposed Bush administration changes to oversight for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2003 (but the collapse is Bush’s fault of course) and pocketed over $42,000 in political contributions from those entities between 1989 and 2008. He has never been so much as a bank teller and he presumes to sit in judgment and pontificate and posture about something he knows very little about apparently. Little wonder we are in such dire straits.

So thanks to our elected officials for wasting a day of the salary that taxpayers pay them and their staffers, and a day wasted from some of the most key figures in the banking system. Whether you think these banking chiefs are bad guys or not, given the market conditions we are in wouldn’t the public be better served by having Jamie Dimon working in his office instead of responding to a bunch of clowns?