Ex-Leaders of Countrywide Profit From Bad Loans

[babylonsister]

Ex-Leaders of Countrywide Profit From Bad Loans

By ERIC LIPTON
Published: March 3, 2009


CALABASAS, Calif. — Fairly or not, Countrywide Financial and its top executives would be on most lists of those who share blame for the nation’s economic crisis. After all, the banking behemoth made risky loans to tens of thousands of Americans, helping set off a chain of events that has the economy staggering.

So it may come as a surprise that a dozen former top Countrywide executives now stand to make millions from the home mortgage mess.

Stanford L. Kurland, Countrywide’s former president, and his team have been buying up delinquent home mortgages that the government took over from other failed banks, sometimes for pennies on the dollar. They get a piece of what they can collect.

“It has been very successful — very strong,” John Lawrence, the company’s head of loan servicing, told Mr. Kurland one recent morning in a glass-walled boardroom here at PennyMac’s spacious headquarters, opened last year in the same Los Angeles suburb where Countrywide once flourished.

“In fact, it’s off-the-charts good,” he told Mr. Kurland, who was leaning back comfortably in his leather boardroom chair, even as the financial markets in New York were plunging.

As hundreds of billions of dollars flow from Washington to jump-start the nation’s staggering banks, automakers and other industries, a new economy is emerging of businesses that hope to make money from the various government programs that make up the largest economic rescue in history.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/business/04penny.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

[hobbit709]

1. Bastards

First they sucker people in on those 125% ads, then they sell the mortgage to someone else, and now they buy up the pieces for pennies and make another profit from the wreckage they caused.

My 78 year old mother, a lifelong pacifist and opposed to the death penalty is right. Her comment about these bastards is "Dust off the Guillotine

[liberal N proud]

2. Country wide is on your side

:sarcasm:

[babylonsister]

4. Yes, we can tell.

And I think that's Nationwide, but I get your drift.

[liberal N proud]

5. Is it?

Some how that stuck in my head. Tells you how well advertising works on me.

[HillbillyBob]

3. These theiving bastards should be charged with fraud,

I don't just mean the ones from Country Wide, Lehmans, Citi, JPMorgan-Chase, all of the banks that were 'too big to fail' also should be charged with RICO, wire fraud, not being a lawyer I don't know what all, but I am sure under the anti-trust laws there should be plenty to put them away for a long time..right after seizing every dime of their 'assets', let their families scrap for the remains like so many of the families that are losing homes that paid their mortgages in good faith.
I know the rpigs make it like it is those folks fault that they got subprime loans.
We bought a house 2 years ago and when we were looking we spoke with several realtors that tried to steer us into a home that was more expensive, ones that we would have been hard pressed to make the payments if we had any financial problems and subprime mortgages that were interest only or adjustable.
In the end we found a realtor that lived in the neighborhood we were renting in after he showed us a couple places in the nighborhood he is a real up and up man who had no smirks or snide remarks when he found out we were a gay couple.
He worked hard to help us find what we wanted (so did I). His recommended mortgage broker worked hard to get us a prime loan, though we did not have a big down.
We went through our own financial depression when I got too sick to work and my partner had been outsourced twice in less than 6 months. We slowly paid off what we owed, which was not all that much as we did not believe in going into debt for a bunch of stuff all we really owed was the remaining year on our pickup and the utility bills from our old place that we had help running up.
In the end we found a large Modular home 4/3 on almost nine acres in the woods for about 1/2 the cost of a place in town. The neighbor hood was going to da hood because the folks with jobs at the levis and wrangler plants were all let go and they were already losing homes, we thought that the economy was going to tank and we thought it best we find a place we could grow food..I suppose we were right about that..mmm
A lot of those home owners were also steered into bad mortgages.