Democrat Barney Frank is the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees government-sponsored entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He was a staunch defender of Fannie Mae even as other experts suggested there were serious problems building in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

According to the Washington Post, Frank opposed giving the Bush administration the right to approve or disapprove business activities that “could pose risk to the taxpayers.” Frank also told the Post he worried the Treasury Department “would sacrifice activities that are good for consumers in the name of lowering the companies’ market risks.” Lowering housing risks wouldn't be good for consumers!

Frank aggressively thwarted reform efforts by the Bush administration. He told The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2003, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s problems were “exaggerated,” a gross miscalculation some five years later with costs estimated to be in the hundreds of billions. Exaggerated!

“These two entities –- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac –- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” Frank said to the Times. “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Earth to Barney: Bad loans by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are what pulled the rug out from under our economy to begin with, you buffoon.

Barney Frank. Another proud Democrat doing his darnedest to destroy America. And the saddest thing of all is -- he doesn't even know it. What a complete ass.

Message to President-elect Obama: With idiots like this "on your side" -- who needs enemies?

After '67, Israel appropriated the Sinai peninsula and began oil exploration, tourism, and even archeological exploration, without it's beloved Sinai, Egypt and Egyptians felt that a whole entire limb was missing, from the body of the nation.

Sadat struck at Israel in '73 to recover this integral part of the Egyptian nation, and then wisely broke off, the earlier Nasser instituted, close Soviet-Egyptian, cooperative, foreign relations.

Sadat then reached out a hand of friendship to the U.S., there after Camp David followed, Egypt and Israel signed the peace, and thus far, the rest has been a success.

Whether the aid money that Egypt receives form the U.S. is worth it, should be best for the American people to say, but I really do believe Egyptians much more prefer the wages of peace, over that other hardly fought and destructive way..

Here is my simple view on economics.

First, I will say at the outset, I have not been particularly concerned with the national debt, assuming we would set it right eventually. But now, if my numbers are right, we have a GDP of $14 Trillion, and a national debt of $10 Trillion. You said earlier the Obama stimulus plan is about 3.5% of GDP, which would be roughly $500 billion assuming again my numbers are right. But remember, that $500 billion in stimulus gets added on to an existing $500 annual deficit which isn't going away, and with lower tax revenue induced by the recession, the deficit will be pushed over $1 Trillion. Run that out for very long at all, and you have a national debt equal to 100% of our entire national output for a year, with more than 10% of GDP devoted to deficits annually. And growing, with debt service alone on the interest pushing past $200 billion annually. So, we have to borrow $200 billion+ more just to pay interest. The Germans, by contrast, are starting with a balanced budget, much less starting debt, and are willing to borrow just 1% of GDP, as an annual stimulus.

Second, I do not buy the argument that a cyclical economy cannot recover without a stimulus. There is, to my knowledge, no evidence to support that premise. A stimulus can offset hard times, then make you worse over the longer term. You say over the long term we're all dead, but that's not entirely true. I've lived through several downturns, as I am sure you have. Both the bad times and the good times have left us worse off with deficits. You don't have to balance the budget tomorrow, if you like, in a recession, but you don't have to create the Mother of All Deficits, either.

Another short word about economists. If you go back and watch the Kennedy/Nixon debates, they engaged in a ridiculous debate about whether running a deficit would cause inflation (there was apparently an unpopular correlation between the two during the Truman era). In the Reagen/Carter era, it was sacred writ that government must choose between inflation and unemployment; not true, it turns out. I recall a liberal economics professor back in college who abhorred Reaganomics and told us, practically with tears in his eyes, that the "crowding out" effect of national debt would push interest rates into orbit. Well, here we are with bigger than ever debt, and lower than ever interest rates. A lot of respected economists haven't been accurate, especially the politicized ones, and as the old saw goes, at least 50% of all statistics are made up on the spot. The only economics I truly appreciate are what you might call home economics. Earn more than you spend. Save what you can. Invest wisely.

A final short word on Europe vs. the U.S. As I said before, the Germans insisted that their borrow and spend neighbors shape up, cut spending, and get their budgets in order before joining the euro. Is our government going to do the same, with our bloated entitlements, and bloated problems like with Detroit, as mentioned earlier? I don't see it. Sure, I realize Mr. Obama has this Dr. Strangelove figure who's going to review the budget and identify cuts, starting with wealthy ag beneficiaries. I'll believe it when I see it. And besides, Mr. Obama might be interested to learn that the biggest beneficiary of cotton price supports in the Depression were wealthy absentee landowners who controlled the best acreage in the Mississippi Delta. Cutting such payments is no way to emulate FDR!

My hope here is that Mr. Obama is just playing politics with his New FDR-ism, hoping the Republicans will knock it down to size and take the blame for being scrooges, and the stimulus will not be nearly so big. If true, he will live up to my image of him as a pretty shrewd politician.