On Christmas Eve, Reuters reported that the U.S. housing regulator approved a compensation package of between $4 million to $6 million for the CEOs of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, the two mortgage giants.
The U.S. housing regulator has approved pay packages for the chief executives of mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the range of $4 million to $6 million, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency has approved the pay details for Fannie’s Michael Williams and Freddie’s Charles Haldeman, which the housing companies are expected to spell out in a securities filing on Thursday, the paper said.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together own or guarantee half of all U.S. mortgages, were seized by the U.S. government and put into conservatorship in September 2008 at the peak of the credit crises.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency did not immediately respond to a Reuters email seeking comment that was sent outside of regular U.S. business hours.
This is a huge double standard being applied here by the liberals in charge of the Government. Not too long ago, the Obama administration and many liberal leaders in Congress excoriated the multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses of Wall Street. Here, President Obama slams Wall Street over almost $20 billion in bonuses. Here, President Obama says ‘I did not run for office so that I could help out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.’ Here, President Obama doesn’t tell the whole truth in his recent weekly address when he says the following:
But much of it was due to the irresponsibility of large financial institutions on Wall Street that gambled on risky loans and complex financial products, seeking short-term profits and big bonuses with little regard for long-term consequences. It was, as some have put it, risk management without the management. And their actions, in the absence of strong oversight, intensified the cycle of bubble-and-bust and led to a financial crisis that threatened to bring down the entire economy.
He completely forgets to mention that the Government (the liberal establishment) twisted the arms of the banks to force them to make said loans.
But yet, it’s okay to let the CEOs of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac off the hook for compensation. What’s the difference between these folks and say folks at AIG or one of the other bailed out Wall Street firms? They were both taken over by the Government. The Government says to Wall Street ‘okay we tok you over now you can only make $500K a year.’ Do they do the same with Fannie & Freddie? No.
The difference? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been longtime corrupt places for liberals like President Obama to get their friends cushy jobs. Friends such as Franklin Raines, Jamies Gorelick and more made millions of dollars all the while creating a housing bubble that led to the recent recession. When a person like President Bush tried to reform and tighten the regulation overseeing these two corrupt institutions, the liberals, like Barney Frank went nutso. Ed Morrissey wrote last year:
By 2004, all of the elements of the current financial collapse had been in place for several years. The aggressive approach to enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) started under Bill Clinton in 1998, and the seemingly endless appetite for paper by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had turned massive amounts of bad loans into mortgage-backed securities to spread their cancer throughout the system. In 2004, a year after the Bush administration tried to tighten regulation and oversight on Fannie and Freddie, Congress was told yet again that disaster loomed. The Democratic response is instructive to seeing who really sat back and allowed this collapse to occur.
You think that’s the worst of it? You’d be wrong. Also on Christmas Eve, the Obama Administration removed the bailout cap from both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So, we taxpayers will be on the hook for billions of even more dollars at these two corrupt institutions as the Obama administration basically handed over its ATM card to them.
Why are the Democrats doing this? Payback for all the contributions to people like Senator Dodd and then Senator Obama that’s why.
Was this the hope and change we were promised?
