Fat cats: Fannie and Freddie dole out big bonuses

Des Plaines, IL

Oddly enough, unless you are aware that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have many friends among congressional Democrats, these lenders are not impacted by the oppressive Dodd-Frank bill.

In late 2008, the Bush administration made a grievous error by placing Fannie and Freddie into a federal conservatorship.

President Obama, who likes to cozy up to the Occupy Wall Street radicals, regularly derides Wall Street "fat cats," but he is strangely silent about F&F's big shots' big payouts.

From Politico:

The Obama administration's efforts to fix the housing crisis may have fallen well short of helping millions of distressed mortgage holders, but they have led to seven-figure paydays for some top executives at troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the government regulator for Fannie and Freddie, approved $12.79 million in bonus pay after 10 executives from the two government-sponsored corporations last year met modest performance targets tied to modifying mortgages in jeopardy of foreclosure.

The executives got the bonuses about two years after the federally backed mortgage giants received nearly $170 billion in taxpayer bailouts — and despite pledges by FHFA, the office tasked with keeping them solvent, that it would adjust the level of CEO-level pay after critics slammed huge compensation packages paid out to former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines and others.

Securities and Exchange Commission documents show that Ed Haldeman, who announced last week that he is stepping down as Freddie Mac’s CEO, received a base salary of $900,000 last year yet took home an additional $2.3 million in bonus pay. Records show other Fannie and Freddie executives got similar Wall Street-style compensation packages; Fannie Mae CEO Michael Williams, for example, got $2.37 million in performance bonuses.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who was the subject of my last post, told Politico, "Fannie and Freddie executives are being paid millions to manage losses, by these same standards, I should be the starting forward for the Lakers. It's completely absurd."

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