Testifying with blunt honesty before the Senate Banking Committee, Fannie Mae's top executives said that it will be years before the mortgage giant can recover from an accounting scandal.Fannie Mae's president and chief executive, Daniel Mudd, alongside chairman Stephen Ashley, testified that the Fannie Mae of today is nearly unrecognizable from before. In mid-June, Mudd volunteered to return some of his salary from the period that the accounting irregularities occured. He served as Fannie Mae's chief operating officer from 2000 through 2004.
James Lockhart, acting director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight - which issued a critical report on the lender in May - said that he believes Fannie Mae is moving "disappointingly slow."
In mid-June, the Treasury and the Department of Housing and Urban Development said that they were starting reviews that could result in limits on Fannie's growth and expansion into new areas of business.
