The Wall Street Journal explains:

In a compensation program that has drawn angry protests from politicians, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac expect to pay about $210 million in retention bonuses to 7,600 employees over 18 months, according to a letter from the mortgage companies’ regulator to Sen. Charles Grassley.
The maximum retention bonus for any individual executive under the plan will total $1.5 million during the 18 months ending in early 2010, according to the letter, which provides previously undisclosed details about the bonuses.

The remaining question is: What will Barney Frank do? As George Mason University professor Russ Roberts wrote at Cafe Hayek back in March when he read in the News that Barney Frank was charged with creating legislation to recoup the bonus money at A.I.G.:

This is the same Barney Frank who has been the champion of Fannie and Freddie, the opponent of keeping too much of an eye on Fannie and Freddie, the champion of their solvency when they were, in fact, insolvent, the champion of bailing them out, the champion of increasing home ownership rates with other people’s money. Is it not strange that this man is now involved in trying to stop AIG from paying bonuses with money he has voted for them to have and money that is being spent partly because of policies he relentlessly pursued?

Read this post by him here.

And for Roberts’s great posts on government intervention in housing go here.