Ex-Countrywide honchos set up firm to buy bad loans By Jerry Mazza

[Joanne98]

By Jerry Mazza
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted at Online Journal
www.jerrymazza.com
March 7, 2009

Adding insult to outrage, former executives of the nefarious Countrywide Financial, who should be involved in a RICO suit for conspiracy to defraud based on thousands of knowingly risky loans they made to tens of thousands of Americans, are now poising themselves to make more millions from the home mortgage mess they helped create, reports the New York Times.

A dirty dozen or so of the former giant Countrywide are now lining up to scoop up millions from the mortgage mess. No less than Stanford L. Kurland, Countrywide’s former president, and his gang of former executives are buying up delinquent home mortgages that the government paid for to take over from other failed banks. They’re offering pennies on the dollar, which still guarantees them a piece of what they collect.

This is the opposite of double jeopardy, being tried twice for the same crime. This is committing the same crime twice and getting away with it. To me, both are illegal. But we live in a world of financial precedents these days, in other words, anything goes.

John Lawrence, head of loan servicing for the new company, told Kurland last week that the new operation “has been very successful, very strong. In fact, it’s off-the-charts good.”

This as Kurland leaned back in his white leather chair in his glass-walled boardroom at the new firm’s, PennyMac, spacious headquarters in Los Angeles, what with its view of the Santa Monica Mountains. This all, of course, as the financial markets were tanking, thanks in part to the gang of 12 and Kurland, who personally walked away from Countrywide with $200 million from cashed in stock.

While hundreds of billion of bucks cascade in from Washington to capitalize the country’s faltering banks, as well as automakers and other industries, a whole new economy is rearing its ugly head to swallow money from various government programs which make up the largest economic rescue in history. And these predators are still walking the street while California ponders if gay marriage is legal and Mexican worker-aliens should be flayed and cast out.

Part of this new high-end, dole-economy is made up of contractors giving the overworked government bureaucrats a hand, i.e., big-time investors buying up fed-procured failing banks and their lobbyists spinning for a chunk of the bailout cash. And here is PennyMac, led my Kurland, 56, once the soft-spoken number two guy to Angelo T. Mozilo, often described as perpetually tanned CEO of Countrywide, the company’s Cesar Romero face.

Here are some highly quotable words about scam-maestro Angelo Mozilo from The Architects of Destruction, researched and written by Ian Cooper’s Options Trading Pit.

Angie’s crimes

“In 2006, one out of five U.S. mortgages was financed by Countrywide Financial . . . at a value of roughly 3.5% of U.S. GDP. Good times for Angelo and his troops.

”One year later, amid swirling questions over a looming mortgage crisis, Countrywide assured the world it had ample capital and liquidity to stay in business . . . having disclosed $35.4 billion in reliable liquidity. Another disclosure: “ . . . sufficient liquidity available to meet projected operating and growth needs and significant accumulated contingent liquidity in response to evolving market conditions.” Suckers!

“While Mozilo and crew rope-a-doped investors with lie upon lie, Countrywide managed to burn through the $2 billion Bank of America cash infusion, an $11.5 billion credit line used to ease liquidity issues, numerous Fed cash injections . . . AND a $50 billion ‘cushion they went on record as having:

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/ex-countrywide-honchos-set-up-firm-to-buy-bad-loans-by-jerry-mazza/

[wuvuj]

1. The bailouts are a gift to hedge funds?

http://www.frontlinethoughts.com/gateway.asp


"If you buy the loan at $.60 on the dollar, and it gets refinanced, you get an immediate capital gain of almost 50%! If it keeps on being paid, you get an effective rate of about 10%.

So, why wouldn't there be a lot of institutions standing in line to buy such a dream investment?

Because banks fear the danger that the security will get downgraded, just like the thousands of such instruments that have already been downgraded, and then their regulatory capital will be impaired. The technical banking term is that you would be screwed. So you don't buy what would be a very good performing asset, because of the rules."


"So, who can (and does!) buy? Hedge funds and private investors with liquidity. But these "vulture capitalists" (among whom are many of my friends) know that the sellers are operating from a position of weakness. And because there are not enough of them to buy the bonds on offer, the prices of these bonds are very low. Smart money managers are raising money to exploit these distressed sellers.

** So, in effect, we are giving banks taxpayer money while forcing them to sell assets that might be worth $.95 cents on the dollar in a less-stressed world. We are shoveling money in the front door while it is being pushed out the back door to my friends at the hedge funds.** "


Disaster capitalism still at work? :banghead: