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Log inOn the Outside Now, Watching Fannie Falter
On the Outside Now, Watching Fannie Falter
by Outspoken on Wed Jul 16, 2008 8:00 pm
On the Outside Now, Watching Fannie Falter
By Anita Huslin
Washington Post Staff Writer
In the four years since he stepped down as Fannie Mae's chief executive under the shadow of a $6.3 billion accounting scandal, Franklin D. Raines has been quietly constructing a new life for himself. He has shaved eight points off his golf handicap, taken a corner office in Steve Case's D.C. conglomeration of finance, entertainment and health-care companies and more recently, taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters.
And he's privately smoldered over the events of the past week, when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were portrayed as being on the brink of disaster, prompting steep drops in their stocks and a federal intervention.
In his first interview in two years, Raines remained insistent that the mortgage finance giant's problems are not rooted in the company but stem from a time when the Bush administration and the Fed insisted the government-sponsored enterprise carried no explicit federal backing.
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has since shifted gears on that stance to prop up the company, drawing praise from Raines, but Raines said more needs to be done to restore confidence in their future.
"The future is what investors care about -- not today -- not just a press release," Raines said.
Watching from outside the limelight has been frustrating, said Raines, who has not spoken publicly about Fannie Mae since being charged by federal regulators with manipulating Fannie Mae's earnings in 2006. Rising from the working-class streets of Seattle to the highest levels of political and corporate life, Raines for more than a decade enjoyed a bully pulpit in Washington, first as head of the White House Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton and then as chief executive of Fannie Mae, where he was the first African American chief executive of a Fortune 500 company.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/15/AR2008071502827.html?wpisrc=newsletter
By Anita Huslin
Washington Post Staff Writer
In the four years since he stepped down as Fannie Mae's chief executive under the shadow of a $6.3 billion accounting scandal, Franklin D. Raines has been quietly constructing a new life for himself. He has shaved eight points off his golf handicap, taken a corner office in Steve Case's D.C. conglomeration of finance, entertainment and health-care companies and more recently, taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters.
And he's privately smoldered over the events of the past week, when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were portrayed as being on the brink of disaster, prompting steep drops in their stocks and a federal intervention.
In his first interview in two years, Raines remained insistent that the mortgage finance giant's problems are not rooted in the company but stem from a time when the Bush administration and the Fed insisted the government-sponsored enterprise carried no explicit federal backing.
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has since shifted gears on that stance to prop up the company, drawing praise from Raines, but Raines said more needs to be done to restore confidence in their future.
"The future is what investors care about -- not today -- not just a press release," Raines said.
Watching from outside the limelight has been frustrating, said Raines, who has not spoken publicly about Fannie Mae since being charged by federal regulators with manipulating Fannie Mae's earnings in 2006. Rising from the working-class streets of Seattle to the highest levels of political and corporate life, Raines for more than a decade enjoyed a bully pulpit in Washington, first as head of the White House Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton and then as chief executive of Fannie Mae, where he was the first African American chief executive of a Fortune 500 company.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/15/AR2008071502827.html?wpisrc=newsletter
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