An Aside on the Courtly Mr Bachus

A couple of days ago I highlighted the depths to which American politics have fallen with the prospect of Mr Bachus ascending the Chair of the House Financial Services Committee.

So it has come to past. And just what are his financial credentials you might be inclined to ponder? Bachus is one of the top fundraisers for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is dedicated to electing Republicans to Congress. It would appear then that his financial acumen is in knowing rich people.

The other bullet in his pistol is that he bolstered support by vowing to enable his subcommittee chairmen to advance their agendas under his chairmanship, eliciting their backing and heading off other potential challengers for the committee gavel.

The result of this is that we now have a Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee who was elected because he is a good fundraiser and had told all his challengers that although he wants to be the Chairman, they get to grind their respective axes.

And just we do expect from this august body?

They want to stem the funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and overhaul its structure-i.e. cripple it.

They want to "immediately take a look page by page at the job-killing provisions in the Dodd-Frank Act because vigorous oversight is going to be essential to make sure they don't use regulation to advance their agenda, so we are going to have a sustained effort to using oversight to keep them in check." (The syntax is Mr Bachus'.) Sounds like we have a war between regulation and oversight although in GOP speak regulation is socialism, and oversight means keeping the socialists out!

Lastly they are going to privatise Fannie and Freddie. Funny the timing on this. I am sure the bad debts of the GSE's will remain in the public sphere, and a new and improved version of Fannie and Freddie will show up in private hands.

If this were a bad novel I might even find it humorous.