During the Vietnam War, James Lockhart served as a naval officer aboard a nuclear submarine, the USS George Washington Carver. His job these days might be even more explosive.
As head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Lockhart is in charge of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage financing titans taken over by the government on Sunday. It's up to Lockhart - armed with powers granted by Congress in July - to keep the companies functioning amidst the worst housing decline since the Great Depression.
To be sure, the next president will determine the fate of Fannie and Freddie - and in the process likely replace Lockhart, 62, a high school and college classmate of President Bush. But for now, the buck stops with Lockhart, who oversees the companies' newly appointed chief executives: Herbert Allison at Fannie Mae and David Moffett at Freddie Mac.
