CHARGES OF BARNEY FRANK CONFLICT OF INTEREST:

Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s.

So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.

Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank’s relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie.

Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest. Critics, however, remain skeptical.

Others, however, are afraid to bring it up because he’s gay. Is this the “soft bigotry of low expectations?” Or is it just, you know, a case of convenient political correctness?

UPDATE: Andrew Marcus emails:

Regarding your post this morning on Barney Frank, for what it is worth, he sponsored legislation to reform Fannie/Freddy in 2007. Better late than never I guess. It passed the House and sat in committee in the Senate.

Here is the link to the resolution: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HR1427:

And here is a link to Founding Bloggers where I examine the resolution in context of Nancy Pelosi’s claims of ignorance regarding the whole problem.

Better late than never, but that’s four years after McCain was on the issue. And is the fact that Frank acted after the conflict-of-interest had ended really exculpatory?