Obama just hit on a lodestone of public indignation that he and Dems should ride all the way to November. Barack has asked the Treasury Dept. to actually follow the rules Congress set for Treasury when it gave Treasury the authority to deal with the Fannie Mae/Freddic Mac mess. Rule #1: don't let the CEO's of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac scoot out of their jobs with multi-million dollar golden parachutes. Obama can hammer on this until Treasury stands up and says whatever parachutes the CEOs were entitled to under their contracts are VOID in this takeover situation, and Treasury just shows them the door without extra compensation coming.
Or Obama can hammer the Treasury Dept/Bush Admin/McSame campaign as supporters of the multi-million dollar payoffs to the CEOs who incompetently pushed these two financial institutions into insolvency, and now you and I are paying them millions for this!
Here's the statement on this Obama just released on http://obama.senate.gov/... The text of the letter Obama sent to Treasury is there.
OBAMA CALLS ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION TO GUARANTEE TAXPAYERS DO NOT PAY FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC CEO SEVERANCE PACKAGES
WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Barack Obama today sent the following letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart, calling on them to address news reports that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac CEOs will receive millions of dollars in severance packages even as they are removed from their posts. When Congress originally approved the authority for the Treasury Department to step in and rescue these companies this summer, it explicitly included a provision that gave the new regulator the authority to block golden parachute payments to CEOs. As the Bush Administration now takes unprecedented steps to rescue these companies with taxpayer dollars, it would be highly inappropriate and a violation of the public trust to allow windfall CEO severance pay packages.
UPDATE: This is from an article in the International Herald Tribume today, entitled "New owners of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae - U.S. taxpayers - deserve transparency." Link is
http://www.iht.com/...
So, ladies and gentlemen of the United States, how does it feel to be the new owner of those two big and banged-up mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?
Not exactly the kind of real estate you were looking to buy, you say? Felt you had swallowed enough garbage after the Bear Stearns bailout tapped you for $29 billion?
Make no mistake: We, the American taxpayers, are amassing quite a portfolio of flotsam and jetsam in the mortgage bust. It certainly brings new meaning to the notion of an ownership society, doesn't it?
....The proud new owners - the taxpayers - could be asked to cover niceties like the pay packages awarded to the chief executives, Daniel Mudd at Fannie Mae and Richard Syron at Freddie Mac, as they exit the accident scene. Estimates for what these arrangements might cost: $24 million in severance, retirement benefits and deferred compensation for both men.