now lessee of was a savvy fellow named david maxwell from philadelphia. maxwell knew that there was a fundamental choice to be made. a right wing would always push to abolish fannie mae because it was a form of socialism. the left wing would always be pressuring any and freddie to earn their keep by doing more for the 4. the bigger fannie and freddie got, the more political pressure they would feel. so this government charter, this rule in public policy, really worth the bother? should fannie mae cut the cord with the federal government and become a truly private company? maxwell lawyered up a study that question and the first person he hired to do the study was jimmy johnson. johnson came from the small town of bentsen, minnesota. i went there. didn't find much. from these humble beginnings johnson became a big operator in the democratic party. he worked for the presidential campaigns of gene mccarthy, musky, george mcgovern, walter mondale. in fact, almost everybody ever backed for the presidency ended up losing and they didn't even come close but that

and it was talking about fannie mae in the 1980s, the david maxwell era, and i was at fannie mae through 84-89. not taking anything away from what david did during that time period, but if you were to take out any references to fannie mae signal is about fannie mae, and asked me what companies is that chapter about, the last company in the world i would've ever guessed was fannie mae. it just had no relationship to reality. there's another book, all the devils are here, the first chapter is largely about against the 1980s. and i found 20 or 25 mistakes large and small and first 2025 or 30 pages. and so i had to wonder well, what's going on in the rest of the book that i don't have as much knowledge about. i could say that in reading bob's book, i found no major mistakes. i might've found a date here or there which i could've quibbled about a year. that's it. where he had information that i was unaware of, it all seemed consistent with other information i had, so bob, again, congratulations on the research work. i found his research had a broad range of people he talked to, that was one o