Why Barney Frank went to work for Signature Bank

If you're trying to say that regulators should be able to go and work for the people they were regulating, that shows a significant lack of understanding about how corruption has worked in actuality.

The reason many countries have blackout periods where regulators are forbidden from receiving any kind of funding from the people they were regulating afterwards is because when its allowed, corruption occurs, and the cost to prosecute it is almost always high. The more centralized and heavily regulated the area is, the more prevalent it is, and worse the enforcement arm becomes less effective at a general cost to the public (look at the SEC).

There are a number of legal ways that bribes and payoffs may happen without blackout periods (i.e. where they can't accept a position with any company doing business in areas they oversaw), and while a number of these loopholes have been closed, there are still many avenues where sophisticated bad actors can easily get around law intended to punish corruptive behavior such as with blind trusts set up for education, where there is only one beneficiary but its set up as a lottery.

Corruption should be rooted out, and heavily punished because it causes harm to the public good, its insidious and pernicious in regulated areas.

“I came to the conclusion shortly after we passed the bill that fifty billion dollars was too low. I decided that by 2012, and, in fact, said it publicly. The reason I say that is that I didn’t go on the board of Signature until later. In fact, I had never heard of Signature Bank at the time when I began to advocate raising the limit. This is relevant, obviously, because Signature was a beneficiary of that.”

No, these are totally different things. Congress does not "regulate" gay rights organizations and affordable housing charities, and you presumably are not being paid to do these things. If you are, then obviously stop that. If you feel strongly about the cause, do it for free. On the other hand, Congress (and you personally) does (did) regulate Signature Bank heavily and have (had) lots of opportunities to shape public policy to benefit /specifically the officers and shareholders of this bank, which also employs you/. The suggestion that these things are equivalent is obviously an argument in bad faith.

The interviewer may have expected that fact to be self-evident to his readers, and that Barney Frank's unwillingness to engage with it, and to try to deflect in order to "win the argument," would speak for itself.

It simply doesnt fit the narrative outside that we re helping drug cartels or shits like that.

The big salaries you hear about aren't there because banks are greedy; they're there because bank shareholders know that banking is hard, and you need to make sure you can command the best person for the job. It doesn't always work out, but that's the goal. Shareholders don't give up dividends for fun, in any industry.

If you don't take risk, you lose market share (and really, risk is where liquidity originates from -- it's the whole reason we have banks; otherwise, we'd all just wait until we have enough cash to buy what we want). Too much risk, and you blow up. Which would be all fine and good, except not enough and too much aren't ever clearly delineated until after the fact.

Barney's great at bickering and obscuring the point.

The power held through working in a government clearly doesn't justify their documented benefits. So, we do hope these individuals to possess monk like qualities with a self sacrificial mindset.

Even though their argument for working in social and civil reform institutes does sound reasonable at first, but I think it is controversial.

I think fundamentally progressive ideas does not win through democratic process. They are disruptive ideas that represent a minority of people. Through an incredible movement these reforms gain democratic edge. But politicians are elected to democratic process and presently compared, they often aren't the ideal persons to led a progressive movement, they have too much skin in the game and can hold back free flowing progressive and disruptive ideas.

Likewise when Frank argues in favor of his working for the banking industry, this raises conflicts of interests for legislators and potential for undue and hard-to-detect influence in a way that e.g. taking an academic position concerning banking or lobbying for gay rights would not.

That being said, Barney Frank’s rationale of wanting to make money is pretty openly terrible, he doesn’t come of great either

In practice, yeah, it probably never happens.

"Any buyer of Signature must agree to give up all the crypto business at the bank"

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-regulator-taps-p...

I would have agreed with you a few years ago, but we've now seen SBF, Donald Trump, and other major figures admit to crimes to journalists (and sometimes on TV).

Regardless, I think you have to investigate from every angle, including asking someone who is likely to lie to you at the advice of their lawyer.

> One: it paid well. I don’t have a pension and, having quit, I wanted to make some money.

Unfortunately, the revolving door very rarely goes wrong...