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McCain: No golden parachutes for Fannie/Freddie CEOs

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John McCain today threw himself into the fray over compensation for the ousted chief executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

‘CEOs that led us into this mess are walking away with over $20 million, and we’re not going to let that happen as president,’ the Republican presidential nominee said at a rally in Fairfax, Va., Bloomberg News reports.

‘They deserve nothing. They should be paying it back,’ he said.

Bloomberg noted that the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, two days ago called on Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart to deny ‘inappropriate’ exit payments to the CEOs, Daniel Mudd of Fannie and and Richard Syron of Freddie.

The two were fired on Sunday after the government seized the mortgage companies, saying that their financial health was in jeopardy.

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McCain apparently took his pay figure from a letter that Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) wrote on Tuesday to Lockhart and Paulson. They said the executives might be paid more than $24 million, in total, in golden-parachute payments.

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) today introduced a bill to bar former Fannie and Freddie executives and directors from getting severance payments.

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