Recently,
the Securities and Excuses Commission (SEC) brought civil fraud charges against
six former top executives at the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fanny
Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddy Mac).
Each outfit is a government-sponsored
enterprise (GSE), quasi-corporations financing Federal policy with capital from
public investors, who had always assumed GSE securities to be relatively safe due to
some wantonly perceived opaque Washington connection, hilarious as that may
seem by 2011 standards.