At one time, Countrywide was one of the largest mortgage brokers in the US. The company has since been taken over by Bank of America to do this, which has plans to remove the name Countrywide and the company logo. But while we wait for the Bank of America, another disturbing problem is now surfacing. It seems that Countrywide executives who were responsible for many of the failed loans are now buying up these loans for pennies on the dollar.

According to a New York Times article and also as repoted on CNN they state:

So it may come as a surprise that a dozen former top Countrywide executives now stand to make millions from the home mortgage mess.

Stanford L. Kurland, Countrywide’s former president, and his team have been buying up delinquent home mortgages that the government took over from other failed banks, sometimes for pennies on the dollar. They get a piece of what they can collect.

“It has been very successful — very strong,” John Lawrence, the company’s head of loan servicing, told Mr. Kurland one recent morning in a glass-walled boardroom here at PennyMac’s spacious headquarters, opened last year in the same Los Angeles suburb where Countrywide once flourished.

“In fact, it’s off-the-charts good,” he told Mr. Kurland, who was leaning back comfortably in his leather boardroom chair, even as the financial markets in New York were plunging.

But it gets even better:

While some critics are distressed that Mr. Kurland and his team are back in business, the executives say that PennyMac’s operations serve as a model for how the government, working with banks, can help stabilize the housing market and lead the nation out of the recession. “It is very important to the entire team here to be part of a solution,” Mr. Kurland said, standing in his office, which has views of the Santa Monica Mountains.

So there you have it. The same people that may have caused the mortgage mess in our country are now bottom feeding and making more money at our expense.

I find this unbelievable. How about you? Should these people be allowed to suck more money out of our government?

Source.