Adam Glassner was an executive that oversaw operations in mortgage bonds at Bank of America during the housing crisis. Due to some deals gone bad between Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) and Fannie Mae / Federal National Mortgage Association (OTCBB:FNMA) , the federal regulator in charge of Fannie, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, filed suit against Bank of America and Adam Glassner in September 2011. A few months later in January of 2012, the same Adam Glassner was hired by Fannie Mae to manage their mortgage bonds.
If this seems a bit crazy, it’s because it is. A banker accused of “materially misleading statements” that caused Fannie Mae to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, will now be working for Fannie while it is under the control of the federal government. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to surprise those near this business. Because so few people are skilled at handling mortgage bonds and all of their derivatives, the government often has to turn to the very folks it tries to regulate.
“There aren’t that many people out there with expertise that don’t have a potentially tainted background,” said Isaac Gradman, a lawyer at Perry Johnson Anderson Miller & Moskowitz LLP in Santa Rosa, California, who works with investors and insurers in such cases. “I would hope they would pull from the population with mortgage expertise that didn’t engage in the type of conduct that caused the crisis.”
