Enrico!

Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, is giving a speech today in Boston.  Will he announce his resignation, out of shame and sympathy with Eliot Spitzer?   Well, the smart money says “no.”

This speech is likely to spell out his full position on the economic crisis, presumably touching on his views on the Bear Stearns execution, and commenting on Helicopter Ben’s performance.  Bernanke began his four year term in January 2006.  It seems likely to me that the new president, whoever he is, will likely replace him at the first opportunity, if not sooner.

Congress has to trot out new legislation.  This is what Congress does.  Barney will most likely outline what he will propose.

In my view, congressional legislation passed in response to an economic crisis is wrong-headed more than half the time, as witness Sarbanes-Oxley, and a lot of the New Deal legislation.  In this case, however, I must reluctantly conclude that a seminal event leading up to this point was the repeal of the Glass-Steagal act.   I think we need to put it back.

At a stroke, the repeal of Glass-Steagal set the stage for the long-running huge inflation of the money supply.  Prior to Glass-Steagal, brokerage assets were not M2, could not be the basis for lending, other than mortgage lending.  Repeal has set the scene for the case now where we are facing bank failures in the next wave, due to their illiquid positions in securities.

Listen carefully to Barney.  Think to yourself:  do you want to amplify his proposals by electing a ratsocrat president?  I don’t pose this facetiously.  Though I kid Barney over his prostitutional ventures, he’s not a stupid guy, and he may sort through this mess and have a useful take.

We have a new contestant in the ratsocrat sleezeking festival: Elliot Spitzer, henceforth known as the Whoremonger. Check out the BAOJ piece here.

I suppose, if the stories of Barney Frank, Splash Kennedy, Sheets Byrd, and William “Cold Cash” Jefferson are any guide, Elliot Spitzer will be feted by his fellow ratsocrats as some kind of courageous victim, his fellow ratsocrats will scoff disbelievingly at suggestions that perhaps he ought best to retire from public life, and everyone concerned will just express complete ignorance of any reason why anyone ought to be embarrassed. It’s a private matter, they will say.

A person has only one character, which he uses in his public and his private life. A whoremonger is not going to be an upright, virtuous public servant. No one has any right to be surprised if a whoremonger proves to be morally corrupt in his discharge of his public duties.

The GOP has disappointed me mightily in the area of rectitude during the last four years, but I will say this for the GOP: when one of theirs goes off the reservation, he is personally and viciously eviscerated by his fellow Republicans. A real man shoots his own dog.