… instigating the next Boston Tea Party …

The Boston Herald broke a story today describing the all-to-common ‘give and take’ which occurs between the regulators and the regulated. Congressman Barney Frank (of Fannie Mae fame) took a free ride to the Virgin Islands courtesy of  Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree’s billionaire fiance,   S. Donald Sussman.  The same fiance who’s Paloma Securities hedge fund received a $200 million Federal bailout.

[Editor's Note:  Congressman Frank chairs the House Financial Services Committee which, among other things, regulates hedge funds.]

Congressman Frank’s explanation: “… I checked with House ethics (officials) and they gave it the OK,”.

In required House financial filings, Congressman Frank reported the trip and assigned the flight a value of $1,500.

Pardon me, a round trip from Maine to the Virgin Islands with four passengers (Congressman Frank , his partner Jim Ready, Donald Sussman and his fiancee Rep. Chellie Pingree)  in a private jet for $6,000.?  A quick Google search turns up figures in the $10,000 – $15,000 / hr  range for a typical business class jet.  Assuming a four hour trip each way and the low end of the cost curve, Congressman your trip was actually worth at least $20,000.  A very lavish gift indeed.  My how a sense of entitlement can affect your math abilities!

Legal and right are not always the same thing.

Quite simply, appearances are you received a lavish gift (that the ordinary citizen would never receive) from a hedge fund manager in an industry you regulate.

And you don’t see a problem with that.

Mr. Frank, you have stayed too long at the ball.

Fade away, gracefully,  but fade away.

“Less bad is never good enough,” Biden said in an interview on board Air Force Two on Oct. 8. He was referring to the dismal employment picture over the past 14 months.  Unemployment has remained above 9.4% for that period marking the longest period of unemployment in excess of 9.5% since the Great Depression.

Mr. Biden, with all due respect, while bad is never good enough; worse is well, just worse.

The much touted stimulus which would hold unemployment under 8% and the health care overhaul which would provide medical coverage to millions of uninsured American were the two signature issues of Mr. Obama’s first two years. 

And how have you explained those two singular acheivements? 

“it’s just too hard to explain,” Biden said. “It sort of a branding, I mean you know they kind of want the branding more at the front end.”   What ???????.

When you complained to the good people of Madison, Wisconsin, “You’re the dullest audience I’ve ever spoken to,”   their behaviour was, perhaps a reaction to your eloquence.

“It’s just really hard to convince people that when there weren’t, up until the first of the year, when there weren’t net new jobs it’s awful hard to say, ‘It’s working,’” he (Biden) said at the end of a three-state campaign swing Oct. 7-8 for four Democratic candidates in Wisconsin, Missouri, and Washington. “It’s counter-intuitive.”

Not counter-intuitive;  incomprehensible.

Possibly time for a tele-prompter?