Justin Rood of ABC News points out how the CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac broke the bank with their compensation last year as they literally began breaking banks with their management of the mortgage giants:

Daniel Mudd, the CEO of Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM), received $11.6 million in salary, stock and other compensation for 2007. Richard Syron, CEO of Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE), took home about $18.3 million last year.

In addition to Syron's salary, stock options and a $3.45 million bonus, Freddie Mac paid for a number of other perks for Syron, such as a car and driver, a home security system, travel costs for his wife, even $100,000 to pay his lawyer to negotiate his employment contract with the bank.

"Yes, yes," said Freddie Mac spokeswoman Sharon McHale, when asked if Syron's leadership was worth $18 million a year. "He's done a lot."

"That is the most outrageous of the current financial disasters," well-known bank analyst Richard Bove of investment firm Ladenburg Thalmann told ABC News. The crisis, he said, was caused solely by "mismanagement, for the purpose of massive personal aggrandizement. It's an outrage."