That's the word from the press reports. Apparently the government is going to hand Fannie and Freddie bucket loads of taxpayer dollars, no questions asked. The NYT reports that they will be given access to $300 billion of government loans at below market interest.

That's nice. Shareholders who would have lost all their money if matters were left to the market, may instead walk away with billions of dollars. Similarly, the top executives of these companies, who earn salaries in the millions and tens of millions of dollars, will keep collecting their paychecks.

We should all be thankful that the government intervened. After all really rich people and investment fund managers can't be expected to be able to handle their investments on their own. They need the helping hand of the government when they really screw up.

Similarly, we don't want the fate of highly paid executives to be left to market. If this happened, some might lose their vacation homes and private jets.

Some people say that we had to hand tens of billions of dollars to the country's richest people to prevent a financial collapse. This is simply not true.

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