Extreme governmental hypocrisy

“In September, when the conservatorships were established, I made clear to Congress that we had developed, with the new CEOs and with an outside pay consultant, employee retention programs” in consultation with Treasury"... “I stated then my view that it was very important to work with the current management teams and employees to encourage them to stay and to continue to make important improvements to the enterprises”... “But I can also say that we run a great risk of these same employees deciding this is the last straw and walking away,” he wrote. “The loss of key personnel would be devastating to the companies and to the government’s efforts to stabilize the housing system.”

James Lockhart, Federal regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, from a letter to Congressman Barney Frank and obtained by Politico, explaining why he's refusing to rescind retention bonuses worth up to $1 million for top executives at those two institutions.

It's so nauseatingly bad to reward retention at AIG that Congress is attempting to pass an unconstitutional law taxing those specific awards at 90%, yet it's perfectly OK to pass out those very same types of goodies at the FM's, seemingly solely because those two completely incompetent companies are fortunate enough to be government-sponsored enterprises (GSE's)?

It appears that AIG's crime was that it wasn't as closely tied to the government as the other recent failures. No bonuses for you, then, but plenty for our little pets.