Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance company that last week ousted its top management amid the fallout over faulty accounting practices, benefits from a number of federal government goodies that would make other public companies salivate.

The corporation and its sister company Fannie Mae are the nation’s two largest sources of home loan financing. Together they own about $3 trillion in mortgage debt, and together they comprise almost the entire category of quasi-governmental corporations known as government-sponsored entitites or GSEs.

The two entities are “private companies with a public mission subsidized by U.S. taxpayers,” according to FM Watch, a coalition of financial institutions dedicated to monitoring Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and a longtime critic of the regulatory framework surrounding the corporations.

That beneficial framework is attracting more than the usual scrutiny and criticism this week following a management shakeup in which Freddie Mac's board of directors fired the corporation's president under allegations of "employee misconduct" and pressured both the CEO and CFO to resign. The shakeup came six months after Freddie Mac said it would restate its financial results to reflect additional unreported revenues in 2000, 2001 and 2002.

The little-known benefits Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac receive courtesy of the federal government are considerable.

Their federal status exempts them from most state and local income taxes. That exemption along with other benefits saves the companies hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

The GSEs can borrow money from the Federal Reserve at a lower interest rate than commercial banks can. In fact, no other entity except for the U.S. Treasury can borrow money from the Fed at a rate lower than Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae can.

In addition, each company has a $2.25 billion back-up credit line with the U.S. Treasury and an implicit—or at least implied—guarantee that the government would bail out either entity in a crisis. The implied bailout isn't etched into the GSE's federal charter, but a failure at either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac would significantly disrupt the nation's flow of mortgage funds and put trillions of dollars of debt at stake. Investors rightly or wrongly tend to believe the federal government would take action to prevent a meltdown from happening.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also are the only publicly traded companies that are exempt from U.S. securities laws. Neither is required to file earnings reports or other disclosures with the Securities and Exchange Commission, although both companies last year said they voluntarily would file those reports. Fannie Mae has begun to do so. Freddie Mac has not.

The GSEs also aren't subject to certain provisions of the federal Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that are supposed to protect individuals' personal financial information. All other financial institutions are subject to the costly requirements.

The government perks come with some responsibility. Part of the deal is that federally chartered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are expected to stabilize the nation's mortgage market and expand homeownership opportunities.

Critics charge that Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's quasi-governmental status has enabled them to balloon to their almost inconceivably huge sizes.