While Freddie Mac's Kellermann was hanging himself in the basement, his colleagues bought or sold 4500 mortgages

His colleagues, some of whom learned of his death on the radio commuting to work, bought and sold about 8,500 mortgages that day, their frantic pace interrupted only by an 11 a.m. meeting for employees who wanted to share memories of a deceased friend.

Mr. Kellermann was set to receive $850,000 over 16 months. Reporters and camera crews showed up at his home in Vienna, an affluent Virginia suburb of Washington.Fearing that someone might attack his house, his wife or their 5-year-old daughter, he asked the company for a security detail.

Early on Wednesday, Mr. Kellermann went to the basement of his brick home and hanged himself.... His body was removed five hours later, through a throng of neighbors, television crews and others.

SHOOT: Amongst all the money and the trappings of success, a dysfunctional nightmare of disappearing money, impending doom, and death.

clipped from www.nytimes.com The pressures were already immense when David B. Kellermann was promoted to the top financial position at the mortgage giant Freddie Mac last September. Then they got even worse. Mr. Kellermann, 41, began working nonstop, sometimes returning home only to change clothes, colleagues say. He was losing weight and telling friends that it seemed impossible to appease everyone — regulators, lawmakers, investors and other executives — given their competing demands. Someone was always angry with him, he told one friend. And no matter how many hours everyone worked, it seemed as if the economy and homeowners were still slipping farther into the abyss. Then early this month, Mr. Kellermann and other executives at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae became the focus of intense scrutiny when lawmakers learned they would receive bonuses totaling $210 million.