From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is the Daily.

When he retired from Congress, Barney Frank's legacy was a piece of legislation designed to prevent another financial crisis.

Now, because of what he's done since, many are asking if Frank helped cause another financial crisis.

Today, my colleague David Enrich talks to Frank about the banking crisis and the unexpected role that he played in it.

It's Wednesday, March 22nd.

David, as you have been sorting through the causes and the fallout of this banking crisis that we are still very much in the middle of, why is it that you wanted to talk to former Congressman Barney Frank?

Well, Barney Frank has been in the middle of so much that has been going on.

So, back in 2008, after the global financial crisis, he was one of the people most responsible for overhauling the system of financial regulation that was in place.

And that was a real landmark achievement that he had.

And then in the years that come, he kind of switched gears a little bit.

He began to support a plan to roll back some of those requirements.

And then right around the same time they started doing that, he joined the board of a bank that's to benefit from those rules being weakened.

And a few years after that, now we're in the present day, that bank was one of the first to fail.

A lot of people are concerned that it's one of the bellweathers that is setting off this global banking panic.

And so, he's gone from being the guy who created the rules to the guy who supported weakening them to the guy whose bank falls victim to this button financial crisis.

Right. A kind of hero to villain, perhaps, journey in a pretty short period of time.

That's right. So, I was really hoping to get a chance to ask him whether he thinks he made some wrong decisions along the way.

And whether he thinks the decisions he made and some ways contributed to the mess that we're now in.

Hi, Congressman, can you hear us?

So, I arranged to speak to him last Thursday and we originally planned to do it by video chat.

It turned out he was in the Caribbean, his wife, I wasn't great.

We had some issues with I think his cell phone and his iPad and his iPhone.

...