Christopher Dodd

If one word best summarizes the current housing market, "foreclosure" would be it. Despite record-low interest rates, American homeowners are losing their properties with greater frequency than at any time since the Great Depression. Yet banks and other financial institutions, until very recently on track to seize 1.2 million homes this year, are facing growing pressure to impose "voluntary" nationwide moratoria on foreclosure repossessions and sales. If they don't do the job themselves, say critics, government should do it. Several major lenders in fact have ceased property seizures in the wake of widespread revelations of foreclosures lacking proper documentation. The calls for action are understandable. Yet a moratorium, rather than restore integrity to our financial system, would further imperil it.

On the evening of Scott Brown’s election, I wrote that among the reasons for his victory was resentment of “a host of actions to prop up Wall Street firms at the expense of taxpayers.”

Who would have thought that less than six months later Brown would cast the decisive vote in favor of legislation that institutionalizes Wall Street bailouts, and whose sponsors — Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank — played key roles in bringing on the meltdown, not to mention representing everything that is sleazy and corrupt about Washington. If Brown wasn’t running against Barney Frank when he railed against the “machine,” then what was he talking about?