(25.10.) Like Madoff’s estate, Fannie and Freddie have spent the last three years under a kind of bankruptcy protection, led by a conservator, DeMarco, whose top priority is to maximize the value of the national “estate” and thereby minimize harm to the housing bubble’s innumerable victims. As both trustees’ travails demonstrate, it’s a thankless job: Madoff’s former investors smear Irving Picard in the press so regularly it’s as if they forgot about Madoff, and Fannie/Freddie conservator Edward DeMarco has alienated so many politicians with his long list of offenses that Timothy Geithner, who recommended him for the job in the first place, is now said to be plotting to oust him.