The Sanders/Frank Feud

[JackRiddler]

22. Metaphors are everything, and yours is revealing.

You think the bank employee Frank is the "hand that feeds" the ungrateful Bernie-dog? Why?

Frank prevented a true financial reform by sinking the hope of it into 1500 pages of loopholes and trivialities that almost never address the central issues of the 2007-9 crash brought about by Wall Street fraud. It's a great employment program for ultimately powerless compliance officers who won't get to see the same books as the Dimons and Feinsteins. Then the next crash, inevitably, will come. It can start tomorrow.

During the time in which Dodd-Frank served to distract on the fundamental issues of too-big-to-fail and unlimited casino plays by institutions holding depositors' money, the banksters who should have been rounded up and prosecuted instead got to plunder the nation so as to rescue their fortunes.

As befits the loyal political factotum, Frank got to rotate out of his politician's chair into plum "consultancy" work for the very banksters he helped to rescue by leading the attack on behalf of the Wall Street bailouts and preemptive exonerations.

So what's my metaphor? Afraid I'll have to reverse the dogs on yours.

Today I see a Frank-poodle nipping at the heels of a man who stands upright and tall for his principles - a man pragmatic enough to say he will use one of those Dodd-Frank loopholes to do the right thing that Frank worked so hard to prevent.