Taxpayers react to Fannie & Freddie bonuses
AMARILLO -- Mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are about to pay out huge bonuses to top employees.
The companies received billions in bailout money, are federally regulated and are even partly responsible for the economic crisis. So the fact that taxpayer money is rewarding the company is upsetting to many Amarilloans.
"If they've run their company into the hole why should they get a bonus for that?" said Mark Brewer.
It is the sentiment everyone ProNews 7 talked to shared.
"I think it's foolish. These people made some terrible mistakes and wasted lots of money and now they're given big bonuses? Most jobs if you lose that kind of money you get fired," said Jim Johnson.
"I think it's really unfair that they are getting bonuses when there's so many people that are losing their job and are getting nothing," said Patt Turner.
Fannie and Freddie say these retention bonuses are needed to keep their good employees with the companies.
"There's plenty of people out there that need a job," said Brewer. "They can find somebody else to fill those spots if they're hurting in their manpower."
And are not Fannie and Freddie partly responsible for the economic mess? Were not they involved in sub-prime mortgage lending?
"I think that they are responsible," said Turner. "Especially for a lot of the loans that were given to people that really couldn't afford them but it looked good and it made them look good."
So if this is how taxpayers feel... how about officials?
"It makes me quite mad and frustrated because among other reasons we continue to do the same thing," said U.S. Representative Mac Thornberry, (R)-Clarendon.
Thornberry says he hopes they can prevent these bonuses from being handed out but either way there is a lesson here for congress.
"I mean I'm mad but what i'm even more concerned about is how do we get better?" he said. "How do we fix this? Because if we don't people throughout the country are going to suffer."
"When you just hand a company money without conditions, without going through the normal process, you end up with a lot of abuses," Thornberry said.
Thornberry agrees the leaders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be accountable for mistakes they made instead of being paid bonuses.
"When you continue to pay these sort of bonuses I'm afraid that accountability goes by the wayside and you just end up with the same old thing that you've already been doing except this time it's with even more taxpayer money," said Thornberry.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency that regulates Fannie and Freddie said Friday that it is their strong belief that ending the retention program would be detrimental to the company.
9-thousand employees would get an average of 20-thousand dollars in bonuses.
