Freddie Mac CFO Checks Out

No "glimmers of hope" for this guy.  David Kellerman, who was the acting Chief Financial Officer for troubled lending giant Freddie Mac, has turned up dead in his suburban home.  His wife discovered the corpse of her late husband and made a call to authorities early this morning.  The death is being reported as a suicide.  Few additional details are being released at this time.  It is unclear whether the couple's five-year-old daughter was involved in the discovery of her deceased father's body.

Speculation surrounds the motive for Mr. Kellerman's apparent suicide, but I'm going to take a wild guess and say the fellow didn't want to be alive anymore.  The handsome, young executive took over the top post at Freddie back in September, assuming control of the company's financials. Recent filings have disclosed that the Justice Department, among other agencies, has placed scrutiny on accounting practices for which Mr. Kellerman has been responsible since even before his promotion last fall, which is being played like a death sentence.

Of course all kinds of people are pissed that Kellerman had approved millions in bonuses to be paid over the next couple of years to ensure that the same geniuses who brought us the current housing mess will be around to clean it up.  Perhaps the social pressure of such an unpopular position as much as any criminal liability explains what happened last night.  Maybe his wife did it.  Maybe she's just such a bitch that he couldn't take it any longer.  

The point is we don't know, and it would be wise to avoid depicting this story as an economic one simply because it fits so neatly into the "sign of the times" narrative.  Better to wait for the TV movie.