Being a member of the Eastern Media Elite, I spent my Sunday morning listening to National Public Radio. The lead story was the government’s takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the generally calamitous state of the nation’s housing industry and financial system overall. After a first segment sketching out the broad contours of the crisis, the host went into a second segment where she asked a housing finance expert several questions about this mess submitted by listeners via the NPR blog. Almost immediately came the question that made my ears perk up: If regulators find evidence of accounting irregularities at Fannie and Freddie, will their former CEOs be forced to give back the compensation they received during that period?
Oh my, I thought. Here we go.
