More Stupidity From Barney Frank

Amidst today's House session in which the four pigs came to beg for Federal trough privileges, Barney Frank uttered one of his stupidest comments yet.

Of course, with Frank's annoying speech impediment, you never know precisely what he said. However, what it sounded like was this,

'It would seem that the basis for helping white collar workers is different than that for helping middle-class workers. I'm not saying anything against white collar workers. But we passed a bill spending $700 billion to help big banks and we saved the jobs of the white collar workers of AIG. Now that we are discussing helping middle class workers in the auto sector, the standards for that help seem to be higher.'

If Barney Frank really can't understand the difference between AIG and GM, he needs to remove himself from any House Committee involving finance or economics.

As the nearby, Yahoo-sourced price chart for AIG, GM and Ford, from 1985 until the present, demonstrates, AIG was never in the same shareholder-value destroying shape that the two auto makers (and, presumably, Chrysler, too) until the past two years.

GM barely cleared stasis for most of the 23-year period, and has ended it with a significant loss. Ford did somewhat better, nearly matching AIG for ten years. But both GM and Ford have been in decline, in terms of sharehold value, for nearly a decade.

Not so AIG. At its peak, it had created three times the value for its shareholders that Ford had for its owners. GM isn't even in the same ballpark.

The giant, complex insurer flattened for most of this decade, prior to plunging in value as the markets for exotic structured finance instruments began to unravel last year.

But it's clear from this simple display that the auto sector has been in trouble for far longer than AIG.

Barney Frank should be ashamed of his lack of knowledge and faulty comparisons. No wonder his viewpoints and actions in the House have had such catastrophic effects on the US economy. Beginning with his 'rolling the dice' on loading up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with too much subprime, low-income mortgages.

We can't afford much more of this idiot's 'work' on Capitol Hill.