Defending bonuses at lending institution

TSO and I were just talking last night about the world having gone mad. This morning I find more evidence of it. It seems that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae want to pay bonuses to the people who facilitated the biggest fraud on the American taxpayers since, well, the last time (Washington Times link);

The federal regulator of bailed-out mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac defended plans Friday to give $210 million in retention bonuses to employees he said had lost years of savings when the companies’ stock collapsed in 2008.

Bonuses, some as high as $1.5 million, will go to 7,600 employees at the two federally established home mortgage companies that lost more than $100 billion last year. They are needed to restrain the best talent from leaving in the midst of the economic crisis spawned when the housing bubble burst, said James B. Lockhart III of the Federal Housing Finance Agency in a letter to Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the Senate Finance Committee’s ranking Republican.

Mr. Lockhart argued that the companies’ previously strong stock prices, now worth less than a $1, were used to woo and pay talent that is now needed more than ever.

Um, that’s a little like paying a bonus to the plumber who flooded your house fixing a leak so he won’t leave. If these goofballs are so damned talented, why are we in this mess? Why was it so wrong for AIG to pay their people bonuses, but not the Mae and Mac?

But wait until you read how many of the crooks and liars will get bonuses from the Washington Post;

The maximum bonus for any employee will be $1.5 million, the regulator said. Freddie’s bonuses are going to 80 percent of its employees, while Fannie’s are going to 61 percent of its employees.

Ninety-two Freddie employees will receive $100,000 or more in 2009 and 121 Fannie employees will get bonuses of $100,000 or more. The FHFA declined to name the recipients, citing privacy concerns.

How jacked up do you have to be to miss getting a bonus? But Senator Grassley is on the job;

Grassley criticized the bonuses yesterday.

“It’s hard to see any common sense in management decisions that award hundreds of millions in bonuses when their organizations lost more than $100 billion in a year. And, it’s an insult that the bonuses were made with an infusion of cash from taxpayers,” he said in a statement.

And, oh, yeah, I lost a lot of money in the stock market, too. A. Lot. Of. Money. In fact, I lost so much, that I didn’t even both to check out how much until the other day. Instead of me getting a bonus to make up for my losses, I’m asked to pay for bonuses at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Apparently, by a retarded imbecile.

But how much of a retarded imbecile does that make me if those bonuses are paid?

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Economy, Liberals suck