Prize

........... Recipient of the 2010 MacDougal Irving Prize for Truth in Market Manipulation ...........

December 18, 2011

The GSE Follies

            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.

           The GSE 6 are accused of not reporting the truth to investors.  Nobody on Wall Street has been charged with anything, and how many SEC staffers are angling to launch their multi-million dollar Wall Street careers from the Agency was not reported either.