Recoil from Barney Frank's gruff manner if you will, but his intellect and effectiveness make him invaluable, especially to the SouthCoast, which forms a substantial chunk of the district of one of the most influential congressmen in America.
In the last term alone, Frank served as the key House architect of financial reform, led the charge in a breakthrough on federal fishing rules, and shielded Fall River from the construction of a liquefied natural gas terminal on its waterfront.
Frank, along with Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, crafted a financial reform bill that fixes some of the mistakes of deregulation. It creates a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, adding safeguards against predatory mortgage and credit card practices.
The credit card provisions, for example, ban double-cycle billing, the practice of using the average daily balance from two billing periods to calculate interest, often pushing it higher.
On mortgages, the law forces banks to verify applicants' credit history, income and employment — something many banks willfully chose not to do, thereby giving mortgages to people who could not afford them. Those buyers would be among the first to tumble into foreclosure as the recession took hold.
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