Countrywide & Mozilo, An SEC Diversion

Countrywide's Angelo Mozilo can't get out from under the mortgage loans that his company made despite Bank of America's purchase of his corporation. Somehow, the SEC regards Mozilo as a prime suspect in the downfall of the financial markets in 2008. Or maybe it's just that Mozilo is an easy target and the SEC needs to prosecute someone, anyone.

Afterall, they have been heavily criticized for ignoring Bernie Madoff's continuous fraud for over 20 years even though they were handed the Madoff case with a full evidence docket in 2006 and subsequently found Madoff blameless in 2008, just months before the entire economy tanked and Bernie bailed.

Angelo Mozilo didn't wince at the declining market, he already had a structured deal with Bank of America, who would obtain funding for the deal through the bailout package the US government was so willing to offer.

Seems that Mozilo is at the lower end of the totem pole at least with regard to the monies at issue. $140 million for Mozillo compared to $50 billion with Madoff. Can the SEC now claim that with this prosecution they have encompassed all of the major players in the ongoing fraud called market capitalization?

What about the CEO's of all US banks? What about the CEO's of all US brokerage houses? What about the Federal Reserve Board who orchestrated repeatedly declining interest rates to encourage repeated refinancing of real property? When will we see indictments handed down for Alan Greenspan and Bernard Bernanke?

Bank of America can also use Mozilo as a scapegoat and now point to this prosecution as a basis for Countrywide's difficult to believe balance sheet. It's not BofA's fault, it's Mozilo's. Of course it's never the incumbents fault, it's always the other guy, the predecessor. Sphere: Related Content