Bailing out the crooks

The New York Times reports that not only did we bail out Fannie Mae, but the taxpayers are paying millions of dollars for lawyers for the guys that drove it into the ground.

$6.3 million so far for them. This is to defend them from shareholder suits brought because of their wrongdoing.

"With all the turmoil of the financial crisis, you may have forgotten about the book-cooking that went on at Fannie Mae. Government inquiries found that between 1998 and 2004, senior executives at Fannie manipulated its results to hit earnings targets and generate $115 million in bonus compensation. Fannie had to restate its financial results by $6.3 billion.

Almost two years later, in 2006, Fannie’s regulator concluded an investigation of the accounting with a scathing report. “The conduct of Mr. Raines, chief financial officer J. Timothy Howard, and other members of the inner circle of senior executives at Fannie Mae was inconsistent with the values of responsibility, accountability, and integrity,” it said. "

Now taxpayers are having to pay to protect them from their manipulations.

Does anybody but me see anything wrong with that?

They are all Democrats.

A tip of the hat to Ed Morrissey. See his blog post here.