Barney Frank Gets It Right (This Time)

Barney Frank will never be a free market champion, but he's smart enough to agree with his opponents at least some of the time.

Bright, funny, and gravel voiced as usual, House Financial Services Committee Chair Rep. Barney Frank -- generally a friend of bigger government and more regulation -- today offered some sensible and insightful thoughts on the financial reform bill in remarks to a group of Massachusetts state legislators

The piece of Frank’s speech that will likely make news is his unequivocal statement that the votes for final passage of the bill had been found in the Senate and that the bill would pass and be signed into law very soon.

But his other statements also deserve a close look and show that Frank’s smarts may lead him to be a sensible thinker who says some things free marketers could agree with. First, Frank blamed the financial systems problems on "non-regulation, not deregulation." On this, it's pretty clear that Frank is right. So many of the biggest problems of the system stemmed not from changes in regulations but, rather from a total failure to deal with new types of products and corporate structures.

Second, for the first time I remember (and needless to say, I haven't reviewed all his speeches) Frank came out against the idea of universal home ownership once so sacrosanct to large factions on both Left and Right. "Home ownership requires a certain level of organization in life and some people just don't have [it]," he said.

Finally, while retaining his call for a national "consumer protection" agency, Frank expressed a clear preference for consumer protection at the state level. Part of this may have been pandering -- state legislators don't want to give up powers to the Feds -- but it's still pretty sensible.

Barney Frank will never be a free market champion, but he's smart enough to agree with his opponents at least some of the time.