May 22, 2008

Who’s the Disgusting One?

Countrywide Finanancial CEO Angelo Mozilo has a word for the folks who are trying to renegotiate the rip-off loans his company dealt out like playing cards during the last few years:  “disgusting.” This from the L.A. Times story:

Apparently clicking “reply” when he meant to hit “forward,” Countrywide Financial Corp. Chairman Angelo Mozilo ignited an online furor Tuesday by describing a mortgage customer’s plea for help as a “disgusting” example of form letters inundating the Calabasas home lender.

Poor Countrywide has been deluged with letters from distressed homeowners, many of whom are being advised by Web sites such as loansafe.org on how to contact lenders.

The email from customer Daniel Bailey Jr. was sent to 20 people at Countrywide, including Mozilo, who clearly is tired of hearing from dissatisfied customers.

“This is unbelievable,” Mozilo said in his e-mail. “Most of these letters now have the same wording. Obviously they are being counseled by some other person or by the Internet. Disgusting.”

Like Mozilo, I don’t have a tremendous amount of sympathy for the many homeowners who were reckless with their finances and/or took out these absurdly risky loans.  But I have even less sympathy for Mozilo, who made millions preying on people’s desire to own a bigger and better home, get something for nothing, and hit the housing jackpot.

If his company had practiced responsible lending, there would be far fewer homeowners inundating Countrywide’s email boxes, because the loans would not have been made in the first place.  When you give out zero-down loans and option-ARM loans and negative-am loans to people with crappy credit and let them lie about their income, this is what you get.  The momentary rush of raking in those thousands in mortgage fees has now been replaced with the dire consequence.

May these form letters swarm the inboxes of Countrywide execs every day and make their lives as miserable as those of their borrowers.

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