Former head of Countrywide has no regrets, despite billions in losses and many foreclosures.

[No Elephants]

Not to mention that Countrywide was one of the companies that fueled the mortgage backed securities that wrecked the global economy. Guess that's what makes it "world class." Priately, though, he referred to subprime lenders as "crooks"--until he made Countrywide one of the biggest subprime lenders.


Conde Nast ranked Mozilo one of the worst CEOs of all time and CNN named him one of the ten most wanted in connection with the 2008 collapse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Mozilo

I wonder if Republicans are still convinced that the electrician who got a no verification mortage was the cause of global economic collapse. CNBC, sister station of the supposedly Democratic MSNBC, was pushing that story for months. I remember DUer WriteDown, since tombstoned (finally), was pushing it hard here at the time. "Liar loans," LOL.

Mozilo Unbowed Says Countrywide Was ‘World-Class Company’

By Hugh Son & Edvard Pettersson - Dec 13, 2012 2:20 PM ET

Countrywide Financial Corp. co- founder Angelo Mozilo said under oath last year that he had “no regrets” about how he ran the mortgage firm and that he only agreed to a record $67.5 million regulatory settlement in 2010 to protect his children.

Mozilo, who led the lender blamed by lawmakers and regulators for contributing to the housing collapse, spoke in a June 2011 deposition as part of a lawsuit between his firm, which was bought by Bank of America Corp. (BAC), and MBIA Inc. (MBI), according to documents filed this week in New York. MBIA, once the biggest bond insurer, claims Countrywide committed fraud by securitizing loans that were riskier than promised.

The crisis was “not caused by an act of Countrywide,” said Mozilo, 73, according to a transcript of the deposition. “This is all about an unprecedented, cataclysmic situation, unprecedented in the history of this country. Values in this country dropped by 50 percent.”

Bank of America, the second-biggest U.S. bank by assets, has spent more than $40 billion to clean up mortgages inherited from the 2008 Countrywide purchase. Congressional investigators released e-mails from Mozilo, the Countrywide chief executive officer, showing that as early as 2004 he was concerned about the decline in quality of mortgages the lender was originating.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-13/angelo-mozilo-unbowed-says-countrywide-was-world-class-company-.html


Read Mozilo's wiki at the above link. (Warning: you may vomit.) And they say that we're the ones waging class warfare? ROFLMAOPIMP

[Enthusiast]

1. The American people are finally getting the message on this.

Except for those avid CNBC and Fox "News" watchers.

They had their whole story all prepared. That official story that we were supposed to believe was out there quickly. They used the new President as cover, implying that Obama was some sort of socialist out to protect irresponsible borrowers. Then as late as this past State of the Union Address, the President (playing along) said that irresponsible home mortgage borrowers were also to blame, lol. Where are the real investigations and long prison sentences? Just don't get caught with a joint. And we are supposed to trust President Obama. He is such an insider. At least he isn't Romney. :eyes:

[No Elephants]

2. ? Bush was President at the time the alleged "liar loans" that supposedly brought down the economy

were made.

The "liar loans" story was all over media as soon as Americans realized we were in collapse, which was months before the 2008 election.

After the election, the President-elect, who has finally copped to being a moderate Republican, and his Republican Secretary of Treasury in waiting had the identical reaction to economic global collapse that Bush and Paulsen had. In fact, Dodd reported that he had wanted to do something about forbidding bonuses and excess compensation in connection with the bailout, but Geithner urged him not to.

And, to this day, Glass Steagall remains repealed; companies that were too big to fail in 2008 are even bigger today, with nothing preventing them from getting still bigger; and mortgage lenders are just as free to offer the same deals to desperate borrowers as they did during the Bush years.

The old paradigms may have served Americans, especially Democrats, until Johnson or Carter. Since then, though, it's been the 98% against everyone else, including ALL of Washington, D.C.--and the 98% has not been winning, no matter which party has had control. It's not Democrats versus Republicans anymore, as the Democratic mayors of Oakland, Boston, Portland, etc. proved during the occupation of 2011.