Former Fannie Mae CEO Admits Failures

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Former Fannie Mae executives largely attributed their company's demise to an "impossible" balancing act to satisfy private shareholders and a public mission, in testimony prepared Friday for a congressional panel examining the causes of the financial crisis.

But a former top regulator rejected the view that Fannie Mae and its smaller rival, Freddie Mac, were unwitting victims of the housing bust and instead blamed a "deeply rooted ... culture of arrogance and greed" at the companies.

"I should be clear that this was a failure of leadership," Armando Falcon, the former head of the companies' regulatory agency, said in prepared testimony.