Posted by Joseph Y. Calhoun, III

Carline Baum on the regulatory reform efforts of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd:

Fannie and Freddie have cost the taxpayer $112 billion so far to keep them afloat, with more to come as the government assumes losses from homeowners and lenders.

Yet Dodd faced the cameras last week and said the Fed had been an “abysmal failure” at consumer protection and regulation.

Yes, it was. So was Congress, which entrusted the GSEs to a weak regulator and made sure little was done about size and quality control.

While bank regulation has been pared back over the last two decades, banking is still a highly regulated industry. It was regulators, not regulations, that failed. Now our bought-and- paid-for Congress, which oversees the regulators, is going to fashion a regulator in its own image and no doubt for its own purposes.

The next crisis will be managed by committee, with Congress looking over its shoulder, not by the Fed. Won’t you sleep better knowing that?

Read the whole thing.