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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21138-2004Dec22.html

Raines’s total compensation in 2002 was $17.7 million. That year, 19 other top Fannie Mae executives were paid more than $1 million, 12 more than $2 million and nine more than $3 million, according to materials released at a hearing this fall by Rep. Richard H. Baker (R-La.), chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees Fannie Mae. Baker is a leading critic of the District-based mortgage finance company.

Among the Fannie Mae officials on Baker's list was Thomas E. Donilon, the company's executive vice president — law and policy, who was assistant secretary of state for public affairs and chief of staff to Secretary of State Warren Christopher in the Clinton administration. Donilon received $4.3 million.

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Fannie , Freddie in the Political Spotlight
Washington Post - Monday, July 31, 2000
Author: Jerry Knight, Washington Post Staff Writer

Ordinarily when Fannie Mae announces its quarterly earnings, chief financial officer Timothy Howard has a conference call with analysts and talks for the better part of an hour about the numbers that drive the performance of Washington's biggest business.

Interest rate trends; comprehensive net interest margins; what it costs Fannie to borrow money, compared with what it costs the U.S. Treasury; LIBOR rates; T-bill spreads—it adds up to billions of dollars measured off in basis points, each of which is one one-hundredth of a percentage point.

You need an MBA just to understand the lingo and an Excel spreadsheet to make sense of the numbers.

But this month, when Fannie put out its second-quarter financials, the conference call was dominated not by the jargon of Wall Street, but the spin control of Washington. Thomas E. Donilon , Fannie ‘s executive vice president for law and policy, took over the teleconference and made a point of introducing Arne Christenson, senior vice president for regulatory policy. Christenson was, Donilon reminded the Wall Streeters, chief of staff to Newt Gingrich when he was House speaker.

When your chief executive, Franklin Raines, used to be President Clinton's budget director and your vice chairman, Jamie Gorelick , is Clinton's former deputy attorney general, it's important for the politically naive numbers nerds on Wall Street to understand that you have a balanced offense. Because from that point on in the call, it was pure politics.

“We manage our political risk with the same intensity we manage our other risks,” proclaimed Donilon , assuring investors they do not have to worry about all the bad things being said in Washington about Fannie Mae .

“It's political noise and not political risk,” he said.

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