Mismanaged Federal Agencies Give Migraines

When, on rare occasion, I attempt to analyze, and make sense of, the actions of our various governments, I am usually soon brought up short by vicious headaches. The present situation, involving those shockingly mismanaged federal agencies - Freddie Mac (FHLMC) and Fannie Mae (FNMA) - are splitting my skull wide open.
Our incompetent, ineffective, wasteful and intentionally complicated legal system wastes most of its unproductive time on hundreds of thousands of frivolous lawsuits, on creating even more unnecessary laws and on persecuting Border Patrol officers for doing their jobs, but is unwilling to even attempt to punish a white-collar criminal, such as the head of a federal agency who lined his pockets with millions of dollars "stolen" from taxpayers.
I refer, this time, to the shameful persons at the top of the corporate ladder in the disgraced and dysfunctional FNMA and FHLMC mortgage businesses.
As I assume you know, Freddie and Fannie, which are federally chartered to provide low-cost home mortgages to the masses, have, reportedly, been so irresponsibly (perhaps "unethically" or even "illegally") conducting their weighty responsibilities that, while their employees enjoyed lavish and undeserved salaries, their stockholders lost billions of dollars, so those corrupt businesses went bankrupt, thus having to be saved by tens of billions of dollars forcefully extracted from unhappy taxpayers.
Both of those disgraced businesses have similar missions and purposes: i.e., to help make home ownership available to most Americans, while performing as a model company, focused on service, reliability and value. Their operations, which were guaranteed by the federal government (i.e., those of us who pay taxes to our rich Uncle), were to be overseen by the Federal Housing and Urban Development agency (HUD) and its several offices, as well as by the Federal Security and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The concept, which began with a Democratic administration in 1938, seemed reasonably sound but, as too often happens when the government gets involved in any business, it wasn't long before amoral men discovered ways to circumvent whatever oversight actually existed, and to then milk their government-created cash cow for everything they could squeeze out of it. By following irresponsible and risky financial policies and practices, they gathered unreasonable profits, which made their stockholders happy and allowed them to pay rich salaries to their employees - especially to the top executives, who raked in annual benefits of more than $10 million.
When the housing market was really heating up, those greedy managers became even more reckless, participating in risky loans and dangerous manipulation of bundles of shaky mortgages. When the economic bubble burst - as was sure to happen - and millions of those carelessly granted mortgages went into default, both FNMA and FHLMC were quickly, and predictably, threatened with insolvency.
The threat to the nation's - even the world's - economy was so severe that our government had to step in and promise unspecified tens of billions of dollars to prevent a total collapse of our economic systems. As part of that bailout, which you and I pay for, the two agency's executives and boards would be replaced.
Is that enough? I think not! The companies' shareholders lost billions of dollars, all taxpayers will lose significant amounts and tax rates will likely be raised to cover the losses. All of that is the sole result of incompetent, unethical, greedy, careless and, possibly, criminal conduct by the managers of the two agencies.
This sort of thing happens all too often these days. It seems clear to me that our government needs to place a very high priority on deterring such "criminal" behavior by white collar criminals. The executives now leaving FNMA and FHLMC with some degree of honor, and with multi-million dollar bonuses and retirements, should, instead, be punished quickly and significantly (e.g., billion dollar fines, and jail time). We need - desperately so - to send a clear message to others who are even today behaving in similar fashion. But we won't; because, for many years, both of those disgraced agencies have been using large amounts of their income to "lobby" members of both houses of Congress, thus ensuring that they would not only be allowed to operate irresponsibly, but that they'd also have enough "friends" in those hallowed halls to protect them in case things ever did begin to sour.
Yes, from disgraceful and damaging sugar subsidies to reckless support for illegal immigrants, our government is rotten to the core. This moral decay in government is what should be the major issue in the approaching election, but it isn't even a topic of mild discussion.
Obama promises "change," but never gets specific, and certainly never mentions the need to clean up government, which clearly includes the current Democrat-controlled Congress. As a maverick, McCain might attempt to do a bit of housecleaning, but hasn't promised any specific actions as of this date.
The idea of private profit and socialized losses must end; a good place to start would be for us to make, at least, the top executives of FHLMC and FNMA (Richard Syron and Daniel Mudd) financially and morally accountable.
But we won't. Thank God for cocktail time?