The view from the fort

In an interview today with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, Countrywide Financial Corp. founder and CEO Angelo Mozilo said:

--The credit crunch is not going away. Despite the efforts of the Fed, liquidity is not improving. The Fed needs to acknowledge there is a serious problem in housing that could spill into the overall market, he said, calling for a "symbolic" reduction in the federal funds rate.

--The downturn in housing will lead to a recession. "I've been proven wrong so far," Mozilo said, but with the level of delinquencies and home price declines wiping out homeowners' equity, "The tide has gone out that this doesn't have (a) material effect on (the) psyche of American people and eventually on their wallet."

-- Countrywide did not get rooked by giving Bank of America the ability to take as much as a 17 percent stake in the company if it exercises its right to convert a $2 billion loan into company stock. Mozilo said he does not plan to sell Countrywide to Bank of America. Never did.

--At the end of the day, Countrywide could emerge stronger from the downturn. "We could be doing very substantial volumes for high quality loans because there is nobody else in town. Although the pie is smaller I think we'll get a bigger part of the pie and be more important than we are today."

--Merrill Lynch analyst Kenneth Bruce's warning that Countrywide could face bankruptcy amounted to yelling "fire in a very crowded theater in environment where you had panic already setting in the overall markets unrelated to Countrywide" and was "totally irresponsible and baseless."

Watch the video, or read the (slightly garbled) transcript .

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