The Ways of Countrywide

Click on title.

I thought Mozilo did himself no good on CNBC this week. This article in the NYT tomorrow won't help. Because of the unique unequal bargaining/knowledge position, those in this field will evoke a wrath greater than the Savings & Loan debacle.

Note the sophisticated telemarketing gimmicks. Two days ago in seriousness I checked on a loan for a real new house we are living in (trying to sell our 35-yr wonderful house two blocks away which does have a Countrywide mortgage) and now I wonder at some of the comments made to me.

I called with calculator in hand, after refreshing my keystrokes for the various elements, Present Value being the negative number of the amount of the loan, Future Value set at zero, etc. It flummoxed the sales rep, who kept (in retrospect) trying to get on script with bigger numbers than I wanted. (I wanted to replicate my monthly payment of $812.57, at today's rates, for the new house which is being carried by a bank loan secured with stock).

I knew I had excellent credit score, but I did not show (we didn't get that far) much of annual earnings, so my psychology was: "gee, am I an 'Alt-A?'"