Fannie Mae
In 1990, Johnson became vice chairman of Fannie Mae, or the Federal National Mortgage Association, a quasi-public organization that guarantees mortgages for millions of American homeowners. In 1991, he was appointed chairman and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae, a position he held until 1998.
An Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) report from September 2004 found that, during Johnson's tenure as CEO, Fannie Mae had improperly deferred $200 million in expenses. This enabled top executives, including Johnson and his successor, Franklin Raines, to receive substantial bonuses in 1998. A 2006 OFHEO report found that Fannie Mae had substantially under-reported Johnson's compensation. Originally reported as $6–7 million, Johnson actually received approximately $21 million.
In the 2011 book Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon, authors Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner wrote that Johnson was one of the key figures responsible for the late-2000s financial crisis. Morgenson described him in an NPR interview as "corporate America's founding father of regulation manipulation". Also according to Morgenson, he changed Fannie's executive compensation plan to be based on volume not quality and earned over $200 Million dollars while working at Fannie Mae.
Read more about this topic: James A. Johnson (politics)