Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!



Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups





















« AoS Lifestyle Crisis In Canada…They’ve Run Out Of Strippers | Main | McCain: I Could No More Drill In ANWR Than I Could Drill In My White Grandmother »
June 11, 2008

Good Backgrounder on Obama's "Tangential" Adviser


tankman.jpg
"My conception of the presidency is basically avoiding
difficult work and asking hard questions of my crucial advisers...
I just want to look cool ridin' around in tanks!"

It also has some relevance to that executive-pay argument we had all day yesterday, but don't let's get into that again.

Last month, Sen. Barack Obama turned to James A. Johnson, a former Fannie Mae chief executive and Washington insider since the Carter administration, to lead the vetting of potential running mates for the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee.

But four years earlier, as Johnson was angling for a job if Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) was elected president, Fannie Mae did some vetting of its own. Company executives had grown so worried about the lucrative consulting deal they had cut with their former CEO that they considered enlisting an outside investigator to comb through the deal "in light of issues that could come up during Senate confirmation . . . or White House review of the consulting contract," according to company documents unearthed by federal regulators.

...

The questions about Johnson began after the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that he received more than $2 million in home loans that might have been below average market rates from Countrywide Financial, a partner of Fannie Mae and a leading purveyor of the kind of subprime mortgages that spawned a national housing crisis.

Responding to questions yesterday about that article, Obama said: "I am not vetting my VP search committee for their mortgages. These aren't folks who are working for me. They're not people who I have assigned to a particular job in a future administration."

...

As CEO of Fannie Mae, Johnson, a former chief of staff to Vice President Walter F. Mondale and chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center, was the beneficiary of accounting in which Fannie Mae's earnings were manipulated so that executives could earn larger bonuses. The accounting manipulation for 1998 resulted in the maximum payouts to Fannie Mae's senior executives -- $1.9 million in Johnson's case -- when the company's performance that year would have otherwise resulted in no bonuses at all, according to reports in 2004 and 2006 by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.

In a 2006 civil enforcement action against Fannie Mae, another agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, called the company's 1998 accounting "fraudulent" and said numbers were "intentionally manipulated to trigger management bonuses."

Johnson left the company before it was swept up in an accounting scandal that tarred its reputation, but even during the years of scandal, Johnson was reaping hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees and other compensation, $3.3 million in all between 2001 and 2006.

...


Although OFHEO said Johnson benefited from the earnings manipulations, the agency did not accuse him of participating in them, and the SEC did not accuse him of any wrongdoing. He ended his term as chairman and chief executive of the District-based company in December 1998, before Fannie Mae reported its financial results for that year. In 1999, he served as chairman of the company's executive committee.

A federal regulatory agency suggested that even if Johnson's compensation for 1998 were entirely justified, Fannie Mae obscured its magnitude, disclosing pay of $6 million to $7 million a year in 1998. But Johnson was allowed to defer 111,623 shares of Fannie Mae stock, a move that was relegated to a footnote and not included in the company's summary compensation table.

Total compensation that year was closer to $21 million, according to an internal Fannie Mae analysis cited by OFHEO.

Anticipating questions about the agreement in 2004, Fannie Mae even drafted question-and-answer talking points, including: "Gimme a break. He's hiding his compensation."

And of course he got outsized perks from the company after leaving it in a shambles. Including those now-famous below-market-rate mortgages arranged by helpful executives at Countrywide, a partner of Fannie Mae, and of course a company still seeking to curry favor with powerful Democratic establishment insiders.

As most of the Democratic establishment supported Hillary (at least initially), I wonder if Obama is now forced to recruit from those operatives so tarnished (or inept) that not even Hillary would have them.

Thanks to Mom.

"Tangential:"


Thanks to Slublog for that pic. I checked my email hoping he'd provided that one since I last spoke to him, and what do you know, he did.


digg this
posted by Ace at 02:01 PM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
mad mad mad mad world: "sheesh auto correct....BUSTELO ..."

Common Tater: "Bustelo is supplied (if you like) in these cute li ..."

Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd: "African missionaries are deploying to America now. ..."

[/i][/s][/b][/u]Oddbob: "[i]Staff meeting via Chinese spyware on Friday; I' ..."

weft cut-loop[/i][/b] [/s]: "There was a program to "reforest" the Sahara. Grea ..."

Unknown Drip Under Pressure: "[i]Let's not. And from now on, every new legal ent ..."

grammie winger - cheesehead: "Very professional, serious people. Posted by: A ..."

Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd: "Some anecdata, the biggest, most obnoxious kamala ..."

Common Tater: "Credentialism. “What are Mrs. Clinton ..."

AltoJackson: " [i]The SpaceX Super Heavy toss and catch was a s ..."

runner: "I looked at a comparative map of Africa, and you c ..."

Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd: "We had a military mission from Botswana visit Rams ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64