By RUSSELL GOLDMAN, JACK DATE and ANN COMPTON April 22, 2009 Law enforcement sources said David Kellermann, acting chief financial officer of mortgage company Freddie Mac, was found hanging in the basement of his Reston, Va., home, dead from an apparent suicide early this morning.
Police believe David Kellermann, 41, Killed Himself in Virginia Home Virginia police say they found David Kellermann, acting chief financial officer of mortgage company Freddie Mac, hanging in the basement of his Reston home, dead from an apparent suicide early this morning. (ABC News)
The death was "an active investigation" and there were "no signs of foul play," Fairfax County police officer Sabrina Ruck said. Local police said they were called to Kellermann's home at 4:48 a.m., but would not say who'd placed the call to 911.
Kellermann, 41, and a 16-year veteran of Freddie Mac, had been the company's CFO since September, after a government takeover of the company following the housing crisis. Freddie Mac had been criticized for reckless business practices that some argued contributed to the housing and financial crisis. The company is controlled by the government and owns or guarantees about 13 million home loans. Freddie Mac and sibling company Fannie Mae, which together own or back more than half the home mortgages in the United States, have been hobbled by skyrocketing loan defaults and have received about $60 billion in combined federal aid. Kellermann was named acting chief financial officer in September 2008, after the resignation of Anthony "Buddy" Piszel, who stepped down after the government takeover.
According to securities reports filed in March, Kellermman was to receive an $850,000 bonus. Last summer, Kellermann owned 43,000 shares of Freddie Mac stock, worth about $395,000. As the company's stock plummeted from $9 a share last July to 80 cents or so this morning, he slowly sold off some shares, for pennies on the dollar. His holdings of 38,861 shares, as of April 11, were worth just $30,000, according to ABC News calculations of Security and Exchange Commission filings. In filings with the SEC in March, Freddie Mac said it had entered into a pact with Kellermann and two other executives to protect them from liabilities and expenses in connection to any threatened or pending lawsuits. The agreement, which kicked in retroactively from the time of the government takeover, would not protect the officials from willful criminal misconduct.
Before he was named acting CFO, Kellermann served as senior vice president, corporate comptroller and principal accounting officer.
"We at FHFA are very saddened by the death of David Kellermann," said the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the government agency that oversees Freddie Mac, in a statement. " For many years, we have known David as a person of the utmost ethical standards who was hardworking and knowledgeable in his field. As the Acting Chief Financial Officer of Freddie Mac during particularly challenging times, David was an inspiration to his staff and many others who were privileged to work with him. We extend our condolences to his family, friends and colleagues," the statement read.
MY FIRST DISCUSSION THREAD - WAS THE BAILOUT NECESSARY???
I SAW THIS BLOG, AND IT MADE ME PAUSE TO REFLECT ON OUR CURRENT METHODS OF FINANCIAL BAILOUT. What do you think?
Our country's leading financial officials (the heads of our Department of Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank) have proposed to bail out an enormous array of overpaid wall street phonies in order to become a foreclosing creditor for 700 billion dollars worth of real estate debt -- even though they know nothing whatever about collecting or foreclosing on non-performing real estate debt. They cannot possibly do their traditional jobs, which they have normally done quite respectably, under such an administrative burden. The mess would continue, perhaps even worsen.
All the Fed Chairman has to do is do is spend half that amount of fresh Federal Reserve Notes on U.S. Government Bonds and stop making a fool of himself by begging Congress for a favor that would just create a nightmare for him, and ergo the rest of us. What that simple inflationary monetary shock would do is immediately increase the U.S. price-level by just about 20%. The dollar would sink that much in the world's money markets and this would (1) stimulate our economy out of its current recessionary threat; (2) raise the value of real estate by 20% and immediately end the wave of current real estate foreclosures; and (3) immediately restore liquidity and financial flexibility to our banks and financial institutions so as to end our current financial woes on the spot.
Domestic creditors would suffer, but not much more than they would under the current wave of bankruptcies and foreclosures. In any case, because of this savings in process and transaction costs, our suffering debtors would gain much more than the creditors would lose.
Foreign creditors would lose at our expense, but they were speculating anyways and must bear the costs that any speculator occasionally must bear. While our current financial gurus, the guys who got us into this mess according to my above cited publication, worry about lowering the world's confidence in the U.S. economy and price-level stability, they should recognize that foreign investors in U.S. bonds have always known that, on occassion, the U.S. must -- for the health of the world's economy as well as her own -- adjust her domestic price level.
Now is not the time to put your blinders on, and smile blissfully into the abyss. I am not saying to walk around screaming "Bah Humbug" to every passerby. I do realize that a person's thoughts, whether positive or negative, do have an effect on their environment. If you think negatively, your mind will automatically seek out confirmation that the world is a terrible place.
Anger provides adrenaline and momentum. However, too often, I see people ignoring the truth, and deciding to put blind faith in that fact that "everything will turn out just fine." It won't, and it hasn't. The only thing that will change things is action...the reality is that those most deserving of a "bailout" are those that don't need one.
So many of us have interpreted the desire to be positive thinkers in a very narrow and ultimately ineffective way. The push to be positive often results in ignoring our true feelings. Instead of recognizing that we don't always feel positive and learning how to convert and turn round our feelings, it so often ends up with us denying them altogether.
Another reason why positive thinking doesn't work is that we often veil our negative feelings with a positive surface. So we say "I want a loving relationship". Sounds good right? Except that underneath there is the hidden message that having a loving relationship wouldn't even be an issue - unless you'd been in one or a series of not so loving relationships.
It's time to get realistic, get mad, and change things. There are no readily available answers, and one is left feeling anger at the recklessness, greed, and incompetence that has been guiding our country for the last 8 years. Wall Street infiltrated our business because of greed, and now has left it crippled and uncertain. The fundamentals of Real Estate are, in the present, critically altered. No amount of positive mental attitude can change that.
I think of Wall Street and Washington as I read Whitman's Democratic Vistas, amazingly enough published in 1871...not long after the Civil War, which was less about slavery, and more about a clash of economic interests and political and social class among whites.
I say we had best look our times and lands searchingly in the face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease. Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States. Genuine belief seems to have left us. The underlying principles of the States are not honestly believ'd in, (for all this hectic glow, and these melodramatic screamings,) nor is humanity itself believ'd in. What penetrating eye does not everywhere see through the mask? The spectacle is appaling. We live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout. The men believe not in the women, nor the women in the men. A scornful superciliousness rules in literature. The aim of all the littérateurs is to find something to make fun of.
The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The official services of America, national, state, and municipal, in all their branches and departments, except the judiciary, are saturated in corruption, bribery, falsehood, mal-administration; and the judiciary is tainted. The great cities reek with respectable as much as non-respectable robbery and scoundrelism. In fashionable life, flippancy, tepid amours, weak infidelism, small aims, or no aims at all, only to kill time. In business, (this all-devouring modern word, business,) the one sole object is, by any means, pecuniary gain.
The best class we show, is but a mob of fashionably dress'd speculators and vulgarians. True, indeed, behind this fantastic farce, enacted on the visible stage of society, solid things and stupendous labors are to be discover'd, existing crudely and going on in the background, to advance and tell themselves in time. Yet the truths are none the less terrible. I say that our New World democracy, however great a success in uplifting the masses out of their sloughs, in materialistic development, products, and in a certain highly-deceptive superficial popular intellectuality, is, so far, an almost complete failure in its social aspects, and in really grand religious, moral, literary, and esthetic results.
I also think of Eisenhower's farewell address.....and the Guns versus Butter dilemma. We have become a paranoid nation, and as Eisenhower warned in the 50's, we will be in big trouble when our military spending outweighs our investment in society's greater good. That time has come.
Weichert Realtors started with one office in 1969 in Chatham, New Jersey. It has now grown to over 550 offices in almost 40 states with 18,000 sales associates and growing........
Weichert entered Illinois in early 2007. The first Weichert affiliate, Weichert Realtors-Kingsland Properties in Wheaton, Illinois started with 4 agents.
Fast forward, to November 12, 2008 at the David Knox Sales Seminar, especially for Weichert agents (FREE TO THEM, BY THE WAY).....
2 years later....13 offices in Illinois.....6 in Wisconsin.....
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A CEO was ordered to take 2 weeks of absence after suffering a heart attack. His doctor advised him to spend some quality R&R time - preferably in a remote place with little distraction or stress.
He ended up in a tiny fishing village in Mexico. He strolled out onto his deck overlooking the ocean and noticed a tiny fishing boat coming in.
"Looks like you caught a few fish there", the CEO bellowed.
"Yes, senior", the man replied, in surprisingly good english.
"How long did it take you to catch all those?"
"Oh, only an hour or so senior."
"Well, why don't you stay out longer and catch more?"
"I have enough to feed my family, and give a few to friends. That's all I need."
"Well, what do you do with the rest of your time?"
"Well, I sleep late, fish a little, and spend the evening drinking wine with friends and taking walks with my wife. I have a full and busy life senior."
(The CEO chuckled) "Sir, I am a Harvard MBA and I can help you. The first thing you need to do is buy a bigger boat, and stay out and fish longer. Instead of giving the fish away, we'll sell them directly to the market. Once you have enough money you can buy a fleet of boats. Then, we'll cut out the middle man and sell directly to the consumer."
"But....what then senior?"
"You'll have to start a corporation and probably move to Los Angeles. As your business grows, you'll add more boats, and become very, very rich."
"And then....senior?"
"That's the best part. Once you've accumulated enough wealth, you can offer an IPO. You'll probably have to move to New York, but you'll make MILLIONS."
"Millions, senior?"
"Yes, millions."
"But, what then senior?"
"With all that money you can move to a tiny fishing village in Mexico and spend your time sleeping late, drinking wine with friends, and talking long walks with your wife."
DAVE EISLEY
DIRECTOR OF AGENT DEVELOPMENT WEICHERT REALTORS-KINGSLAND PROPERTIES (630) 346-0098
Thought this was worth sharing.... I had never read this book, but figured with the economy the way it is, I better figure out how to live in the woods.....when I read this passage, I realized we haven't really progressed in over 150 years...
When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, who are at least as well off as the other classes, I find that for the most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, that they may become the real owners of their farms, which commonly they have inherited with encumbrances, or else bought with hired money-and we may regard one third of that toil as the cost of their houses-but commonly they have not paid for them yet. It is true, the encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one great encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being well acquainted with it, as he says. On applying to the assessors, I am surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the town who own their farms free and clear. If you would know the history of these homesteads, inquire at the bank where they are mortgaged. The man who has actually paid for his farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point to him. I doubt if there are three such men in Concord. What has been said of the merchants, that a very large majority, even ninety-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of the farmers. With regard to the merchants, however, one of them says pertinently that a great part of their failures are not genuine pecuniary failures, but merely failures to fulfil their engagements, because it is inconvenient; that is, it is the moral character that breaks down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the matter, and suggests, beside, that probably not even the other three succeed in saving their souls, but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savage stands on the unelastic plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex Cattle Show goes off here with eclat annually, as if all the joints of the agricultural machine were suent.
The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself. ... As Chapman sings,
"The false society of men- -for earthly greatness All heavenly comforts rarefies to air."
And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. As I understand it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the house which Minerva made, that she "had not made it movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided"; and it may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, in this town, who, for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and move into the village, but have not been able to accomplish it, and only death will set them free. Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. As if one were to wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him, or, gradually leaving off palm-leaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin, complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy him a crown! It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for. Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man's providing a certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be as simple as the Arab's or the Indian's? When I think of the benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any carload of fashionable furniture. Or what if I were to allow-would it not be a singular allowance?-that our furniture should be more complex than the Arab's, in proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! At present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not leave her morning's work undone. Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.
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