As I'm working today, I have C-SPAN on in the background (Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae hearing) and I'm getting madder and madder at the stupidity and smugness of the CEOs.
A congressman asked all four of them to state their salaries for the period, like, 2003-2008. Richard Syron's answer made me laugh out loud.
Syron hemmed and hawed about $2 million a year or $4 million a year but the congressman pressed him for an estimate and he gave a figure with the caveat:
That's present value actuarially depending on how long I live.
These weasels have said over and over again: We couldn't have predicted the meltdown blah blah blah blah bad information blah blah it's complicated blah blah blah it's the accountants' faults blah blah blah it didn't happen on my watch blah blah blah.
So...
Genius Syron, former CEO of Freddie Mac, couldn't have helped homeowners avoid foreclosure due to breathtakingly stupid lending practices, but evidently, he's got a very accurate picture of his salary, down to the actuarial implications and the vagarities of his life span.