Establishment Politician Barney Frank Shockingly Doesn’t Like Anti-Establishment Movie The Big Short
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Barney Frank, former U.S. congressman from Massachusetts, was last seen stumping for establishment candidate Hillary Clinton in Politico (though perhaps “attacking Bernie Sanders” is a better description), is back in the news for an interview at Slate titled, no surprise, “Barney Frank is Not Impressed by Bernie Sanders.”
The bulk of the interview consists of attacks on Bernie Sanders, which is typical modus operandi for Frank, a huge Clinton supporter. Among other things, he claims he’s got “little to show” for his 25 years in Congress (other than passing the most amendments of any House member in a Republican Congress, apparently, which earned him the title of “the amendment king”), and that everything he and his supporters want is unrealistic. But again, that’s standard behavior for Frank—he’s an establishment guy who supports establishment politics, so of course he doesn’t like non-establishment candidate.
Where the interview gets really interesting is when he starts talking about The Big Short and The Daily Show. As the co-author of the Dodd-Frank Act, the aim of which was to reform Wall Street and the “too big to fail” banks, Frank has a vested interest in the success of his legislation—even in retirement. As most people now understand, and as The Big Short made clear, the “too big to fail” portion of the Act has failed miserably, as the largest banking institutions in the nation are still inflated to dangerous degrees. Meanwhile, small community banks have been negatively impacted, which only increases the power of the mega-banks. Overall, Dodd-Frank is a mixed bag, but Frank himself apparently will brook no criticism. Here’s what he had to say on The Big Short:
What did you make of The Big Short, by the way?
I didn’t see the movie. I read the book. Why?
It’s good.
Well, I know the situation, I read the book. I am told at the end of the movie they say nothing changed, which is nonsense.
The movie does say something like that. The politics of the movie are actually interesting because it’s more cynical than I think people like you are.