Mickey Kaus thinks Franklin Raines, the disgraced former head of Fannie Mae, under whom massive ($9 billion!) accounting fraud occurred, can redeem his political future (formerly rumored to be a possible Democrat Treasury Secretary — the first black so appointed) by giving back his plush retirement benefits. Mickey seems to think he should hang on to his lavish compensation already received — 8 figures in a good year — "water under the bridge" I suppose.

I think Mickey is dreaming. Fannie Mae has been a cesspool, and Democrat insiders have been running the place for a long time. Would anyone in his right mind expect that the Enron executives could hand back their retrement benefits and get off the hook? The accounting frauds perpetrated at FNMA allowed those Democrat appartchiki to collect their massive bonuses, after all.

Mickey does manage to point out how the New York Times is doing its best to play down the significance of the Fannie Mae fraud, and obscure the political backgrounds of those responsible for it. It will be amusing to compare the number of articles on Enron and FNMA, after a bit more time has passed.

Thomas Lifson  12 27 04