Barney Frank

Rep. Barney Frank has attacked the Bush Administration's terms of its loan to the auto industry for calling for wages to be put in line with those paid at foreign non-union run plants:

"The president has added an unfair assault on working men and women, which could require them to accept a disproportionately large reduction in what is currently legally owed to them," he said in a statement. "I am particularly opposed to the notion . . . that could give foreign auto companies in effect the ability to dictate wages for all American auto workers."

Rep. Frank, as a typical Democratic congressman, plainly does not understand the marketplace. The foreign auto companies have no ability to dictate wages for American auto workers. If they did they would set the wage level at minimum wage and save themselves a bunch of money. Rather, they pay the wage level set by the marketplace in which workers and their employers arrive at a compensation level that is mutally beneficial.

Sadly this economic ignoramus is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.