The top executives at the mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could get paid as much as $6 million apiece for 2009, despite the companies’ dismal performance this year, The New York Times reported today. The chief executives of Fannie Mae, Michael Williams, and Freddie Mac, Charles Haldeman Jr., each will receive $900,000 in salary, $3.1 million in deferred payments next year and another $2 million if they meet certain performance goals, the paper reported, based on filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were seized by regulators in September 2008, have needed $111 billion in taxpayer money to stay afloat.

Citigroup Inc. said today that it has repaid $20 billion in federal bailout money. The company is now free of pay restrictions on its key executives. Citi had received $45 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program at the height of the credit crisis last year. Later, around $25 billion of that was converted into common stock, representing nearly 34 percent of its stake held by taxpayers and leaving the lender with a $20 billion balance to repay. Wells Fargo & Co. also announced yesterday that it has repaid $25 billion in bailout money following a $12.25 billion of common stock offering. Earlier this month, Bank of America repaid its entire $45 billion in TARP funds. Other major banks that have already paid back their TARP funds include Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley.

First-time claims for state unemployment benefits fell a seasonally adjusted 28,000 to 452,000 in the week ended Dec. 19, hitting the lowest level since September 2008, the U.S. Labor Department said today. In the week ended Dec. 12, the number of people who continued to collect benefits fell 127,000 to 5.08 million, the lowest level since February. The four-week average of continuing claims fell 90,000 to 5.23 million, the lowest level since March, MarketWatch reported.

A big drop in volatile aircraft orders masked a broad increase in demand for other U.S.-made durable goods in November, the U.S. Commerce Department reported today. Orders for durable goods rose a seasonally adjusted 0.2 percent in November, held back by a massive 32.6 percent drop in aircraft bookings. Excluding transportation goods, orders rose 2 percent. Orders in the latest report were stronger in every major industrial category outside of transportation. Orders for core capital equipment goods — a gauge of business capital investment — jumped 2.9 percent. Although the monthly figures are volatile, the trend is improving, MarketWatch said, with orders up in two of the past three months. Through the first 11 months of 2009, durable-goods orders were down 21.6 percent compared with the same period in 2008.