Maybe it’s me but at any level this appears to be very wrong!

The US Government put huge amounts of taxpayer’s money into the two huge US Mortgage companies Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation).

Now the BBC has reported that:

The heads of US mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may each receive pay packages of up to $6m (£3.7m) for 2009, depending on company performance.

Now I’m not an American nor do I really understand the issues BUT when taxpayers put in $111,000,000,000 of THEIR money into these organisations (that’s $365 for every man, woman and child on the US Census!) and so many of those same US taxpayers are up the proverbial financial creek without a paddle, there has to be a better way of rewarding top bosses (of US publicly owned corporations) than the option of $6,000,000 each!

But the regulator which decided the pay levels said the awards were 40% lower than before the government bailout.

The sums involved reflected the need to attract and retain talent, it argued.

Frankly, I just don’t believe that there aren’t many other incredibly capable business leaders who would do these jobs for a fraction of six million dollars.  (The present incumbents are Michael Williams at Fannie Mae and Charles E. Haldeman Jr. at Freddie Mac who will receive a base of $900,000 in 2010 with the opportunity to earn $5.1 more if “certain targets are met“.)

Read the article here – I’m going to lay down in a dark, quiet room for a while!

By Paul Handover