... You've done nothing for me.
You said someday I'd have a whole lotta money,
I'd be a millionaire
But when that didnt happen over night
I found out how much you really cared
Well, all you want is a whole lotta money
All the rest is just jivin' honey
Countrywide Financial chief Angelo Mozilo (that's him pictured at left, and not Rick Springfield, author of the ditty quoted above) says the government has done "zero" to help troubled borrowers (and, by inference, the entire mortgage lending industry) get back on their feet.
Rising delinquencies and defaults have produced a crisis of faith among international investors who once poured billions into mortgage lending. That's forced lenders like Countrywide that once depended on borrowed money to mostly limit production to loans that are eligible for purchase or guarantee by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Mozilo's solution? Lift the $1.4 trillion cap on Fannie and Freddie's loan portfolios, and raise the $417,000 conforming loan limit so that more loans are eligible.
“In terms of tangible effort from the federal government...there has been no program, no federal effort, no legislative assistance – zero,” the Financial Times of London reports Mozilo as saying at a conference put on today by -- get this -- the Milken Institute in Beverly Hills.
Mozilo apparently doesn't count the ongoing Securities and Exchange Commission probe of insider trading by executives at publicly-owned lenders as tangible effort from the federal government. Then again, most of the 2 million families said to be facing foreclosure probably aren't that impressed either, as any fruits of that effort would presumably benefit shareholders in the companies, not the people they loaned money to.
Democrats have introduced bills that would make Mozilo's (and Fannie and Freddie's) dreams come true, while the Bush administration has put most of its foreclosure relief eggs in the FHASecure basket.
