Barney Frank, chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, pushed for a four-part overhaul of the nations finance system today, including sweeping reform of the securitization system and more government investment in affordable rental housing.

Frank, a Democrat representing Massachusetts’ Fourth Congressional District, told an Urban Land Institute luncheon today in Boston that Congress will soon pass legislation putting caps on leverage, making executive compensation subject to shareholder vote, putting limits on loan securitization and giving federal regulators the power to unwind failing non-bank institutions.

Frank said that critics accuse him of "pushing everybody into 30-year fixed rate mortgages. I say, what’s wrong with that?"

Lenders have reacted strongly to Frank’s call to hold back 5 percent of the securitized loans they make, saying the limit will not give them enough capital upon which to loan.

"What you’re telling me is you don’t have any money," Frank fired back. "And we wont let you lend money you don’t have."

"There’s a great deal of advantage," to securitization, Frank said, but the current system allows people to get "way over-leveraged."

Requiring lenders to hold 5 percent of securitized loans would help quash what he termed "an investor strike" in the market and "set up rules so people can be confident they can go into the market and invest again."

Frank likened current federal regulatory efforts to the government’s regulation of trusts and the stock market in the 20^th century. He said the efforts would not "smother innovation, but would contain the excesses."

Frank also promised more federal funding for affordable rental housing, a shift in policy that previously had pushed home ownership over renting, and led many under-qualified borrowers to take out home loans they could not afford.

"(The federal government is) getting back in the business of building affordable rental housing," Frank said. "For many people that’s as good as it will get, and that’s not bad."