.25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
Angelo Mozilo
The son of a butcher, Mozilo co-founded Countrywide in 1969 and built it into the largest mortgage lender in the U.S. Countrywide wasn't the first to offer exotic mortgages to borrowers with a questionable ability to repay them. In its all-out embrace of such sales, however, it did legitimize the notion that practically any adult could handle a big fat mortgage. In the wake of the housing bust, which toppled Countrywide and IndyMac Bank (another company Mozilo started), the executive's lavish pay package was criticized by many, including Congress. Mozilo left Countrywide last summer after its rescue-sale to Bank of America. A few months later, BofA said it would spend up to $8.7 billion to settle predatory lending charges against Countrywide filed by 11 state attorneys general.
Time
The son of a butcher, Mozilo co-founded Countrywide in 1969 and built it into the largest mortgage lender in the U.S. Countrywide wasn't the first to offer exotic mortgages to borrowers with a questionable ability to repay them. In its all-out embrace of such sales, however, it did legitimize the notion that practically any adult could handle a big fat mortgage. In the wake of the housing bust, which toppled Countrywide and IndyMac Bank (another company Mozilo started), the executive's lavish pay package was criticized by many, including Congress. Mozilo left Countrywide last summer after its rescue-sale to Bank of America. A few months later, BofA said it would spend up to $8.7 billion to settle predatory lending charges against Countrywide filed by 11 state attorneys general.
Time
posted by madtom at 12:05 AM
2 Comments:
Wish that was true. We could raffle off positions in the firing squad and balance the budget. I'll start the bidding at 20 grand and hope to god there are enough wanting it even more. But I would still give 20 grand for starters, I shit you not.
Well if we are going line them up, I think the worst criminal in the bunch are the people at the ratings companies, followed by the deregulation. I guess we could argue about the ordering, but without those two failures the markets would have reacted long ago.
You can see that low income housing had very little to do with the meltdown, they were not in the subprime or arm lending. But you really cant blame the lenders either, they just sold a product, it's the regulators that allowed them to misrepresent the loans in their advertising, and the ratings people that must have lived on mars to rate arm and subprime securities and bonds as AAA rated...these people were either taking money directly, or were just to well educated for their own good.
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