I always enjoyed Paul Gigot when he was Mark Shields' opposite number on the Friday Lehrer News Hour.Gigot left the Show when he became editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal.In today's Journal he launches a rather stinging indictment of Fanny and Freddie and assorted accomplices, and all their works and pomps. Here's the beginning:

Angelo Mozilo was in one of his Napoleonic moods. It was October 2003, and the CEO of Countrywide Financial was berating me for The Wall Street Journal's editorials raising doubts about the accounting of Fannie Mae. I had just been introduced to him by Franklin Raines, then the CEO of Fannie, whom I had run into by chance at a reception hosted by the Business Council, the CEO group that had invited me to moderate a couple of panels.Mr. Mozilo loudly declared that I didn't know what I was talking about, that I didn't understand accounting or the mortgage markets, and that I was in the pocket of Fannie's competitors, among other insults. Mr. Raines, always smoother than Mr. Mozilo, politely intervened to avoid an extended argument, and Countrywide's bantam rooster strutted off.

It just gets juicier.