Bunning Still Throwing 'Em High and Tight

Political affiliations aside, I love it when politicians speak honestly. It's so refreshing that it just makes my day. For that reason, we're shedding some light on the recent diatribe issued by Jim Bunning, a Republican Senator and ex-MLB pitcher.

The comedic aspect here is that Bunning's rant is closer to that of a crotchety old man who wants his early bird special discount even though he arrived at the diner after 5:30 PM. He has no idea how complex the current financial crisis is, but that doesn't stop him from demanding that heads roll.

The following excerpt is from a Bloomberg article that came out today:

Senator Jim Bunning said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, by rescuing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is acting like China's finance minister and both Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke should step down.

"I sincerely believe that Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke should resign," said Bunning, a Republican from Kentucky on the Senate Banking Committee. "They have taken the free market out of the free market."

Paulson and the federal regulator for Fannie and Freddie placed the two largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies in a government-operated conservatorship on Sept. 7, ousting their chief executives and eliminating their dividends. Treasury also may purchase up to $200 billion of stock in the firms to keep them solvent.

"We no longer have a free market in the United States, we have a government controlled free market,'' Bunning said in an interview. Paulson, a former chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., "is acting like the minister of finance in China."

Bunning, 76, criticized Paulson's successful effort in July to obtain congressional authority to pump unlimited amounts of money into Fannie and Freddie to keep them afloat.

"When I picked up my newspaper yesterday, I thought I woke up in France. But no, it turned out it was socialism here in the United States," he told Paulson at a July 15 Senate Banking Committee hearing.

Following Paulson's Sept. 7 announcement of the takeover of Fannie and Freddie, Bunning said he now feels like a citizen of China.