Conspiracy Theories on the Rise After Freddie Mac CFO Reportedly Commits Suicide

David Kellermann, the acting Chief Financial Officer of the troubled Freddie Mac mortgage company, was reported to have hung himself in his own home, where he lived with his wife and 6 year old daughter. This morning while watching the Today Show, they had interviewed neighbors and all are very saddened by the ordeal, but most intriguing is the shock. One woman said, “they were just such a happy family. They were the first on our street to get their Christmas lights out, and they were the first to hand out Valentine cards to everyone.”

According to an article from Politico, there has been an uprising in conspiracy theories pointing out the fact that things just “don’t add up”. In the current case, details are still being worked out but foul play seems to have already been ruled out by authorities. Police responded to a phone call from Kellermann’s home at 4:48 a.m. After arriving at the house, police found 41 year old Kellermann hanging in his basement.

We all know that it is difficult to pinpoint who all the depressed people are in the world. If it were easier there may be less deaths.

“Ninety percent of people who kill themselves have a mental disorder, the most common being depression,” says Dr. Paula Clayton, medical director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. “Depression can be fatal: It’s the fourth-leading cause of death in men from age 25 to 60.”

Conspiracy theorists seem to think depressed people aren’t the first to hang out Christmas lights and be the first to pass out Valentine cards. Although he had worked for Freddie Mac for 16 years he was just recently appointed to a leading financial role to handle the current situation. Maybe the stress to resolve the current debacle was just too much to handle. Others think foul play. Maybe Kellermann was going to come clean with the numbers he crunched but was stopped before the truth was exposed.

It sounds like a great Tom Clancy novel. The truth is, all suicides are devastating. But being placed in the current situation it is easy to begin speculating. Maybe his suicide had nothing to do with his work place. Maybe he learned his wife was having an affair? Or maybe there were other issues with family or friends.

Whether or not those factors had anything to do with Kellermann’s death, they help form a narrative that could help make sense of an inherently unfathomable act. Frank Ochberg, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University and a former adviser to the U.S. Secret Service, says the public often expects Washington stories to conform to certain archetypes they’ve internalized through movies and television. “The audience demands a certain kind of quick and superficial explanation,” he said.

Maybe Kellermann took Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa) comment too literal. Back when AIG was paying themselves huge bonuses with bailout money, Grassley, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, made the comment, “I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they’d follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.”