So I drove down Wisconsin Avenue this morning to pick up an entry visa for China (more on this later) in D.C On the right was a grandiose pile of a building, a ghastly cross between Colonial Williamsburg and Louis XIV's Versailles. My first reaction was: To what colossal ego was this thing erected? My second thought: Why is there nobody here? The place looks empty.

As I drove farther, both questions were answered by a huge sign: FANNIE MAE. Was that a statue of Frank Raines toppled on the (still immaculately groomed) front lawn? (Fannie bought the building in the 1970s, long before Raines arrived, but the architecture matched the hubris that characterized the Raines era and afterward.)

And on the pedestal these words appear:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

 Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

 The lone and level sands stretch far away.