Angelo Mozilo, Former Countrywide CEO, Claims He Doesn't Know What 'Verified Income' Is
by Matt Taibbi
RollingStone
December 28, 2012

Another day, another corporate titan suffering from devastating amnesia. This time, the memory-loss patient is none other than Angelo Mozilo, the former CEO of Countrywide Financial.

Deposed in the landmark lawsuit between the monoline insurer MBIA and Countrywide/Bank of America, Mozilo professed not to know the difference between "verified" income and "stated" income. He also made some incredible remarks regarding his notorious "Friends of Angelo" lending program, in which, among others, political figures like North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad and Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd received Countrywide mortgages on highly advantageous terms just because they were tight with the CEO.

As chief of Countrywide, Mozilo headed the single most corrupt subprime mortgage lender in America during the period preceding the crisis...

Mozilo Unbowed Says Countrywide Was ‘World-Class Company’
by Hugh Son and Edvard Pettersson
Bloomberg
December 13, 2012

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...

“I have no regrets about how Countrywide was run,” Mozilo said. “We were a world-class company in every respect.”...

Inside the Countrywide Lending Spree
by Gretchen Morgenson
The New York Times
August 26, 2007

...potential borrowers were often led to high-cost and sometimes unfavorable loans that resulted in richer commissions for Countrywide’s smooth-talking sales force, outsize fees to company affiliates providing services on the loans, and a roaring stock price that made Countrywide executives among the highest paid in America.

Countrywide’s entire operation, from its computer system to its incentive pay structure and financing arrangements, is intended to wring maximum profits out of the mortgage lending boom no matter what it costs borrowers, according to interviews with former employees and brokers who worked in different units of the company and internal documents they provided. One document, for instance, shows that until last September the computer system in the company’s subprime unit excluded borrowers’ cash reserves, which had the effect of steering them away from lower-cost loans to those that were more expensive to homeowners and more profitable to Countrywide...

A.C.L.U. Sues Morgan Stanley Over Mortgage Loans
by JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG
The New York Times
October 16, 2012

The American Civil Liberties Union is accusing Morgan Stanley of fueling the production of risky, expensive loans that targeted African-American borrowers...

The action against Morgan Stanley follows a series of lawsuits brought by investors and federal and state officials against some of the nation’s largest banks. The A.C.L.U. suit, which is to be filed in federal court in New York and will seek class-action certification, claims that Morgan Stanley violated the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act....

African-Americans living in the Detroit area were 70 percent more likely to wind up with a subprime loan than were white borrowers with similar financial characteristics, according to an analysis, contained in the lawsuit, of New Century loans made between 2004 and 2006...

The Justice Department has accused two major banks of discriminating against black and Hispanic customers. A settlement in one case was announced in July, when Wells Fargo agreed to pay $175 million to settle claims that the bank steered roughly 34,000 minority customers into subprime mortgages, even though they could have qualified for mortgage with lower fees and less risk.

The largest settlement of a residential fair-lending violation came last December, when Bank of America agreed to pay the Justice Department $335 million to put to rest claims that its Countrywide unit discriminated against minority borrowers....
 

Foreclosure crisis hits older Americans hard
by Josh Lederman (Associated Press)
San Francisco Chronicle
July 19, 2012

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 1.5 million older Americans already have lost their homes, with millions more at risk as the national housing crisis takes its toll on those who are among the worst positioned to weather the storm, a new AARP report says.

Older African Americans and Hispanics are the hardest hit.

"The Great Recession has been brutal for many older Americans," said Debra Whitman, AARP's policy chief. "This shows that home ownership doesn't guarantee financial security later in life."...

According to AARP:

—About 600,000 people who are 50 years or older are in foreclosure.

—About 625,000 in the same age group are at least three months behind on their mortgages.

—About 3.5 million — 16 percent of older homeowners — are underwater, meaning their home values have gone down and they now owe more than their homes are worth.

AARP said that over the past five years, the proportion of loans held by older Americans that are seriously delinquent jumped by more than 450 percent...