
Already we were doing untenable balloon mortgages based on the fantasy that, when your payment shot up in 5 years, you'd surely be earning enough money to pay for it. After all, you're a capable young man/woman, aren't you? Sure you are! Don't worry, a go-getter like you won't have any problem handling the increased payment by then. It's 5 whole years from now!
Underwriters were still allowed to do some of thier jobs and interest rates weren't that low so the days of rampant sub-prime lending wasn't quite here yet. But granting loans to people that had no business with one? You bet! As we used to say: We make our money on the servicing! Making it by collecting interest for 15 for 30 years from someone you're pretty sure can afford it -- who does that anymore?
We did plenty of other interesting things at Countrywide too, like forging customer signatures and taking files home with us, but that was petty stuff. Looking back You might think we were considered vermin by the mortgage banking industry, slimy, cheating opportunists who would eventually get what was coming to us. Actually the opposite was true: Countrywide had the reputation of being an extremely well-run company. This was in part because we paid as little as possible and didn't hesitate to cut staff to the bone at the first hint that the market might be slowing. But it was also because we had an innovative system that utilized sparkly new 286 computers, electronic networks, and "modems" to monitor interest rates, which were changed several times a day and instantly transmitted to all Countrywide offices.
Every so often I would see Angelo Mozilo, the Kingpin of Countrywide. Once I rode in an

Last week Angelo was indicted for fraud. My only question is: What took them so long?
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