MIT Golub Center for Finance and Policy
Public Policy
A Conversation with Barney Frank on November 5th
By
When: Thursday, 5 November, 2015 from 12 pm – 1 pm
Where: Wong Auditorium, 2 Amherst Street, E51-115
Open to the MIT Community.
Barney Frank recently retired from the U.S. Congress after serving for three decades during which he earned a reputation as an outspoken and deeply-respected legislator, with a keen sense of humor. Congressman Frank played a key role in some of the most important legislation of our country’s recent history. As Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Frank helped craft a bill to slow the tide of home mortgage foreclosures in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis, as well as the subsequent $550 billion rescue plan, and the landmark Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act—the sweeping set of regulatory reforms aimed at preventing the recurrence of conditions that led to the 2008-09 financial crisis. Born in Bayonne, New Jersey to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe—Frank’s parents were a truck stop owner and a legal secretary—Barney Frank graduated from Harvard in 1962 and went on to pursue a Ph.D. He next took a job as chief assistant to Boston Mayor Kevin White in 1968. Frank won a seat in the Massachusetts State Legislature in 1972 and the U.S. Congress in 1981 and went on to become a national leader of the LGBT rights movement. His 16 terms in Congress have left a legacy of civil rights and financial reform and his abilities are already sorely missed.
