Do employees have to sign something or take a loyalty oath to have the "right" to wear the wristband? It could be some sort of peer pressure thing to legally bind people into silence or from suing the company.

It is slightly reminiscent of the citigroup folks being leveraged into silence/loyalty by their severance packages

I'm an insurance agent, and I network with mortgage brokers. I worked with a ton of Countrywide brokers, and they always bragged that Countrywide wouldn't sell of your loan, like other loan originators.

Now, independent loan originators who wouldn't be holding the bag when the foreclosure came, I can understand. They were venal and unethical, but not stupid. But since Countrywide guarantees that they'll hold your loan for all 30 years, wasn't pushing bad loans a bit stupid?

I know, not a big deal, but the little things add up. That was free money that CW was getting to use, and they don't have it anymore. Why? Because they screwed up and undercharged me, then decided to charge me so much that they would have a 100% buffer for all of my annual expenses - and I don't trust them to not go bankrupt and keep my money. I'm going to cash the overage check as soon as possible. I decided that paying my own taxes and insurance was just easier. I suspect that a lot of people are closing escrow accounts and savings accounts and moving them elsewhere. I'm a little worried about Countrywide shutting down, but our mortgage is a contract that is transferrable and it doesn't really matter who we have to pay. I don't think that Countrywide is going to make it through this. Once the CEO's start to panic sell and people start closing accounts, it's hard to regain positive momentum.

Ooooh...

Countrywide had hired the Burson-Marsteller public relations firm to perform crisis management.

Cue Star Wars "Imperial March" when B-M shows up.

Don't forget their yeoman's service for Union Carbide in the Bhopal chemical disaster in India, when ~4000 people were killed by the chemical leak there (and hundreds of thousands likely to suffer lifetime health problems).

When B-M appears, you know the spin cycle's about to kick into high gear -- their slogan should be "If you need PR really bad, we're a really bad PR firm!"

I wonder how this'll impact the Clinton campaign, since her campaign guru is Mark Penn, who heads B-M. I hope it won't divide his attention from spinning Clinton as a Democrat to the American voters. Then again, maybe they're counting on her winning and somehow helping Countrywide when she's in office as a thank-you.

what stuns me is the long wait for anyone to care about some guy at the top running a company into the ground,and walking away with tens of millions,sometimes hundreds of millions.of course workers lose everything,often even things they had been promised thier whole lives.

i would have thought some kind of "golden parachute law"would have passed,you know,something like "if you make the company go bankrupt,you do not get any money".but as the ocean between rich and poor grows wider by the day,the general public doesn't seem to care if these folks just steal from them.

my favorite scam these guys pull?granting themselves stock options,then using shareholder money to buy back stock to "shrink the float".so they dillute you with extra shares,then use your own money to buy them back,so they get to steal from you twice,just to pocket the money once....

They used to be a small regional car insurance company. I think what you're seeing is the inevitable change of Countrywide into something like Prudential's integrated real estate, insurance, financial services arm. And of course you need a tie in with senior care, long term care and disability insurance.

In answer to Gitaiba's question, a mortgage lender can hold the loan while still selling the risk of default (and other risks) by means of collateralized mortgage obligations(CMOs) and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).

If he had to choose, would Mozilo go out like Lay or like Ebbers? One can only hope it might come to that. Until we start putting the heads of people like them on pikes atop the steps of the capitol, the odds will always be at least 12,000 to 1 in favor of greed and rapacity.

I'm waiting for the leaked voice mail of two smarmy Countrywide execs talking and chuckling about how "Grandma in California" is going to lose her house when he ARM goes amok.

At this point it is clear... the big lie is falling apart. The rubes who still sign on are doing so at great peril. The rats are packing up shop and planning their exit strategy. Hillary, or some other unfortunate 'fall guy' will take the brunt of a shattered and looted infrastructure. The media will blame them, and the rats will gather in the shadows to wait for their moment to rise again.

Apparently this PR firm isn't even very good if the Johnson & Johnson and U. S. Postal Service cases are being lumped together in the public mind with the purveyors of lead-painted toys. (The Tylenol was poisoned from the shelves, not at the factory, and to blame the Postal Service for anthrax in the mail is a case of shooting the messenger.)

A short exercise in arithmetic...

Mozilo took $138M in option money. Divide that by 12,000 pink slips and it comes out to $11,500 per body.

But Krugman also includes the salary number:

one of Mr. Mozilo’s other distinguishing characteristics: the extraordinary size of his paychecks. Last year Mr. Mozilo was paid $142 million, making him the seventh-highest-paid chief executive in America.

Which brings the price/body to $23,333.

Not that the above is any kind of econometric measure, but I wonder how it compares to the severance payout for the people who were laid off?

and lately, everyother week we get an email from countrywide telling us how secure they are. Every time I get one it makes me think they are considering bankrupsy.