I was on the Bill O'Reilly show last night and placed in the position of defending Barney Frank against the charge that he was largely responsible for the housing bubble and crash. I have occasionally had bad things to say about Frank myself, so I don't mind O'Reilly or anyone else criticizing him, but this one seemed more than a bit over the top.

O'Reilly blamed Frank for protecting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their unsound lending practices. I made the obvious points that Fannie and Freddie were followers, not leaders in this mess (they lost market shares to the private sector whiz kids). More importantly, Frank didn't even take over the Financial Services Committee until January of 2007, after almost all the bad loans had already gone out the door.

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We all know how hard it is to get by on tens of millions of dollars a year. That is why the Washington Post was near hysterical in its support of the Wall Street bailout earlier this month. They argued that if we didn't give $700 billion to the banks right away that all hell would break loose.

Those who wanted to put conditions that ensured that the money didn't go into the pockets of shareholders or top executives, or even that the bailout was done the right way through direct injections of capital (as it eventually was) were denounced as reactionary Neanderthals. So, the bailout went through and the Wall Street executives are now getting tens of millions in compensation, courtesy of average taxpayers.

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