With today’s news that Congressman Frank is retiring I realize that I will never use these interview questions I prepared for him.

These are just notes, a live interview would have been more fluid and I could have gone in to more detail – for example I could have asked for more specifics on exactly how he thought the financial system would have collapsed had Congress not undertaken the heist of the century by stealing billions from the taxpayer and giving it to Wall Street bonus pools.

I got the idea for the interview when I heard Congressman Frank state that he had not heard from any financial professionals in his state regarding financial reform. This surprised me as I had sent letters to his office.

I contacted the Congressman’s office and explained that I had employees and clients in his district, used to be headquartered in his district and was a member of a network with over 100 more employees and thousands of clients in his district. I also explained that the far-reaching nature of his legislating is national in scope.

His office played nicely and said they would do an interview, however they refused to ever actually schedule it.

So, here are some notes I had on what I might have asked.

Interview Questions:

Congressman Frank, chairman Bernanke and others have used words like “angry” to describe their feelings about AIG – does this mean that you will stop giving them our money or is it just talk?

Do you know of any economic example in history when printing new money and a bailout of this type has worked?

You’ve spoken out against no-bid military related contracts, which is great.
We are paying the lending servicing companies essentially a $4 billion to $20 billion bonus – do you call this a no-bid contract? If not, what was the bidding process?

Merrill Lynch paid hundreds of millions in bonuses and we gave them over $20 billion of TARP money – was this what Congress intended would happen with TARP funds? If so, how is it fair to take tax money from Americans who are hurting and pay bonuses with it? If not, how could you take $700 billion in taxpayer money without understanding where it would go?

Essentially, an investment firm executive who had been stupid enough to invest in ridiculously over-priced, over-leveraged subprime debt would have been eligible for a bailout bonus and could have perhaps bought a fleet of Ferraris for its executives. While a firm smart enough to see the over-leverage and avoid it now not only has to contend with a down market but with competitors who have free money from the taxpayer. Is this how you intended the system to work?

Nowhere in a definition of capitalism does it talk about massive government spending of this type – so how do you define our current system?

You’ve said the goal of taking hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money was to increase liquidity in the marketplace and get banks lending to consumers again. As many suspected, this has not occurred at all and it has simply served as a profit center for banks. If the goal really was to have the money lent to the people why didn’t the government simply lend the $700 billion directly and hire an administrator? If the United States can build space shuttles and nuclear submarines, surely we could get a government contractor to administer loans — even if the contractor was paid $50 billion – the equivalent of Microsoft’s annual revenue, then we still would have seen $650 billion placed into the market in loans. Why was this not done?

You’ve said repeatedly that TARP was needed because the financial system would have been destroyed if not for the bailout bonuses. Can you explain how?

You’ve stated that the state state securities divisions are necessary in addition to the SEC and not redundant. Can you name any case in the last decade that the state has brought which was not already a violation of existing SEC law or other regulations?

The financial regulatory environment has made communication and disclosure to clients challenging. For example, registered financial professionals are prohibited from hiring another person to write an article or speech in their name and prohibited from directing advertisements to senior citizens. Congressman, have you targeted senior citizens in campaigns and have you personally written every word of your speeches, letters, articles and bills? If not, are Members of Congress held to a lesser standard than financial professionals?