Finger-Pointing Continues Over Bailout’s Effectiveness

Yesterday, it was Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass,), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, blaming mortgage servicers for a failure to modify loans, thereby prolonging the nation’s foreclosure crisis.

Today, it’s Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, accusing lenders of hoarding federal funds, thus prolonging the nation’s credit crisis.

From Dodd’s statement delivered during today’s panel hearing on oversight of the Treasury’s bailout:

The acceptance of public funding carries with it a public obligation. One cannot benefit from taxpayer support in all its many forms and assume that one has no duty to serve that same taxpayer.

[…]

Let me say as clearly as I can: hoarding capital and acquiring healthy banks are not — I repeat, are not — reasons why Congress authorized $700 billion in emergency funding.

And that may be true. But altruism and patriotism are not the reasons why banks exist. If the banks are hoarding money, it’s because that’s in their best financial interest. Should it come as a shock to Congress that Wall Street is driven by profit?

Someone should remind the Democrats that they were in charge of writing the legislation that might have forced the same activities they’d so like to see.