Offered Up

When the shotgun wedding of Bank of America and Countrywide was announced the most reviled CEO since Ken Lay Angelo Mozilo, placed his right hand man of the housing bubble, David Sambol in the drivers seat to lead the new company’s mortgage business when the honeymoon began. That was when the fix was still in and everyone on the inside still got everything they wanted. But before the wedding Sambol that weird uncle of the bride who was set to rake in $28 million to stick around for three years raised too many eye brows in congress after irking too much disgust in public for making billions of dollars in junk loans to credit worthless borrowers.

Countrywide Financial Corp. President David Sambol, who became a target for critics of the mortgage company's loan practices and executive pay, will leave after Bank of America Corp.'s takeover instead of running the combined home lending operations as originally planned.

For its part the bank touted the reasonable decision. According to spokesman Robert Stickler,

``We felt it was very, very important that we have someone who is rooted in our culture and the way we do business and who has relationships throughout the company,'' Stickler said. ``That's why we are sending one of our most senior executives to California.''

and for his part Chuck Schumer touted the righteous decision

``Bank of America has done the right thing in deciding not to make Mr. Sambol part of its future plans,'' said Schumer, a New York Democrat, in an e-mailed statement, adding he hopes Bank of America will ``clean up'' Countrywide's lending. ``You cannot divorce Countrywide, the company, from the executives who pioneered Countrywide's predatory practices.''

Yea OK, thanks Yuk. Did you mention how Sambol keeps the cash he just doesn't have to work for it? Too bad they didn't write Sambol out of the deal to begin with, why would Bank of America want to keep him on for $28 million anyway, was it that sterling lending record of his?

Now anyone with a three digit IQ can see that Sambol was simply offered up after the deal to guarantee a continuous stream of mortgage payments to bank executives looked threatened. And what about Schumer, is he part and parcel of the executive package? If so it's a move right out of the double speak 101 text book. While masquerading as being all about the country and the recovery, the true purpose is to prevent defaults on those all important mortgage payments to bank CEOs. We can have our opinions on that, but Chuck is pushing that ill advised Fannie and Freddie jumbo to bail out the bankers bill right. You know the one to permanently raise the limit from $417,000 to as high as $729,750 in expensive parts of the country.

Not allowing Fannie and Freddie to hold such loans on their books "would be a serious problem" that would "really crimp any recovery," in the U.S. housing market, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday.

That's a great idea Chuck if you want to bankrupt Freddie and Fannie, but $729,750 is not exactly in the little guys league.