Barney Frank gave most of the time to industry representatives to voice their desires to committee members about his bill to control derivative trading – one of the biggest culprits in the economic meltdown.
Americans, including those committee members, are still more or less blind to its faults.
The members of the House Financial Services Committee got to feel just the left foot of the rogue elephant that stomped, trumpeted and brought on the derivative misery of lost assets, bailouts and foreclosures.
The derivative elephant has other feet, a tail, floppy ears and tusks that the committee didn’t get to feel of while Frank concocted his pretend billsy-willsy. Loopholes abound as to who’s exempt, what can qualify and when the trades can proceed – or not.
And consumers are mad as hell.
An array of consumer groups and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission are concerned that it is not strict enough. And they are angry that they were shortchanged in testimony time before the committee.
A single consumer representative was given less than a day to prepare testimony and then was allowed only a few minutes to speak. That’s all.
Frank admitted last week in an interview that “we made a mistake that we did not have broad enough testimony.” Mistake?
Great kidder is Frank – and a poor loophole plugger.
Tuesday he allowed a little more feel of the elephant in the middle of the room. Representatives of Americans for Financial Reform got a chance to speak to the committee. Director Heather Booth said Frank responded that he’d try to tighten exemptions.
He’d better do more than that. He needs to put a Mahout trainer on the beast’s back.
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