Fannie Mae Adheres to SEC Guidelines

“Feeble Mortgage Oversight” (editorial, June 20) deserves a response because many of your assertions do not apply to Fannie Mae. You say we should have to “meet the stringent financial reporting standards that govern other publicly traded financial companies.” We do. On March 31 this year, Fannie Mae became a permanent Securities and Exchange Commission registrant, requiring us to file the same financial statements as every other public company. In fact, we go further than that by disclosing details about our risk management that no other large financial company or SEC registrant does, including the results of a regular “shock test” of our books.

You quote SEC Chairman William H. Donaldson saying that he wants us to be “role models for disclosure.” We are. The independent ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has examined Fannie Mae’s disclosure practices and judged them “to be at a very strong level on a global basis of comparison,” citing “disclosure about Fannie Mae’s financial health that is unavailable from other, similar financial institutions.”

Fannie Mae, as the first of the 14 housing enterprises to register with the SEC, is the first to have fully audited financial statements available through the SEC’s EDGAR Web site (www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml). We are proud of our commitment to financial transparency. The public deserves no less from corporate America.

Chuck Greener

Senior Vice President

for Communications

Fannie Mae, Washington