I was over on Red State reading this front page post about the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac takeover. Like many of their posts on specific economic actions, it is mostly reasonable in it's analysis.
But buried in there is this little gem:
Today’s report makes no mention of the fact that both Fannie and Freddie have engaged in some shenanigans recently to make their capital positions look less bad. Their CEOs are being fired summarily for this. If we were in China, they’d probably have “committed suicide” with bullets inexplicably entering the backs of their heads. I’d certainly want to shoot them if I were a shareholder of either GSE. There are some things the Chinese do better than we do.
That's right, they're wishing that CEOs that screw up would be summarily shot. Now kudos to them that they want CEOs to pay a price for incompetence. But this is a bit over the top.
The rest of the article is very good including this discussion of what we taxpayers are facing:
Remember that portfolio losses are borne first by common shareholders, then by preferred shareholders, and only then by subordinated and senior debtholders. By interposing a new class of senior equity between the existing shares and the debt, the Treasury has guaranteed that holders of agency paper (including subordinated paper) will not take any losses.
Who takes the losses instead? US taxpayers. I’ll give you a minute to get the anger out of your system. Go break a few windows if you have to.
Feeling a little better? Ok, let’s keep going. Why the %^&#%&*$% would Treasury do this? Because of their first goal, which is market stability.
...
What about the stockholders? What will happen to them is best described by a technical Wall Street term that unfortunately violates the posting rules of this site. Suffice to say that the term denotes the forceful insertion of a long, pointed object into one’s anus.
But shooting the CEOs? Wow, I guess it's ok to screw regular people but when you screw the stockholders, then they're ready to exact serious punishment.
