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Barney Frank has become something of a darling on the left because of his feistiness, which heaven knows is in short supply among Democratic politicians. That quality seems to work best for someone who will go down with the ship on principle, all other considerations be damned; someone like Dennis Kucinich, who voted against the House health care bill under just that circumstance. (Phoenix Woman brilliantly articulated the hazards of this outlook.*) It does not work so well with someone who appears to be at least half in the pocket of the interests he ostensibly oversees.

His interview with Ed Schultz earlier this week gave a clear illustration of why. Schultz pushed on a couple of key points: Last year's bailout came with no strings attached, and as a result the major players have gone back to the same reckless behavior. Frank turned prickly, which is what feisty looks like when you don't like it, and almost immediately said "don't condescend to me" when Schultz was obviously doing no such thing. He proceeded to condescend to Schultz throughout the interview; "the point I made to you several times" and "What's the matter with you?" stand out. There was also this:

SCHULTZ: Congressman, why can't you just admit that this was a serious misstep on the part of the Congress? You forked out billions of dollars to save the economy, I get all that, to get the structure back going again. But you didn't ask them questions about how this...

FRANK: No, Ed. You're wrong.

SCHULTZ: Oh, tell me I'm wrong.

FRANK: You're wrong. And I'd like to be able to explain it.

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Issues of financial reform and regulation can be intimidating to laymen (this layman anyway) because of its insanely complex nature. It is easy to imagine the system as a big Jenga tower, and moving one piece might cause the whole thing to come crashing down. No one wants to be seen as inadvertently - but earnestly! - advocating for a ruinous policy. Of course, that means the opposite extreme is then in play: Turning into Hamlet and endlessly agonizing over what to do at the expense of actually doing something. Not to mention the fact that, not to put too fine a point on it, wide swaths of our leadership has for years now been deliberately advocating ruinous policies both at home and abroad. That should certainly make those of us in the unwashed masses comfortable with forcefully advocating what seems reasonable based on available data. It's not as though we could screw it up any worse.

Still, it would be nice to have a rule of thumb, compass point or guiding principle to go by. Having been a reasonably close observer of the meltdown and its aftermath, here is one I have come up with: It is necessary (but not sufficient) that any proposal be strenuously opposed by Goldman Sachs (GS). In a largely protected industry Goldman appears to be the closest thing to untouchable as we have. It is in Matt Taibbi's already-legendary description "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." It has installed a revolving door between the highest levels of the government and its board room, enjoys privileged lines of communication with the Treasury secretary exceeding even that of our closest allies, was happily positioned as a key competitor died, then days later benefited as a key debtor was drenched in cash (Yves Smith called it a "massive backdoor subsidy to the likes of Goldman"), and as it happens was the second largest contributor to the president in the 2008 election cycle. More so than any other player in financial services, GS always seems to be nearby when bad things happen.