Even during the Housing Boom, when almost everyone I knew was forsaking the film industry for quick money as either a realtor or mortgage broker, I had a vague sense of disgust for anyone associated with the Real Estate market. There was a 'GO-GO Get Rich Quick' Attitude and a lack of a moral compass that pervaded those trying to sell the American Dream for No Money Down.
When the market collapsed and all those just-licensed brokers and realtors came wandering back, looking for work in Hollywood I asked a couple of them if they felt anything approximating Guilt for putting money ahead of peoples' lives. None of them did. Most couldn't even accept their role as human wrecking balls that assisted in the destruction of other people's lives and dreams. The standard churlish answer I got was, Well, it isn't my fault someone can't pay for their house! And then they would fall back on the old trope of Personal Responsibility before shifting into a discussion of how hard they had it.
My disgust for those involved in the Housing Bubble has once more been reaffirmed by Angelo Mozilo, the CEO (read Boss and Head Gangster) of Countrywide Mortgages. The once mighty and now beleaguered mortgage company that willfully misled home buyers, putting them in mortgages and homes they could not afford, telling them 'Oh Don't Worry', and then when those same people could no longer afford those mortgages simply shrugged and went, "Eh tough."
MSNBC reports that Mozilo has dipped into the pool of outrageous to find a new all time low:
"Disgusting," Angelo Mozilo wrote in his inadvertent reply to an e-mail from Daniel Bailey Jr. who had asked the company to modify terms of his adjustable-rate mortgage.
Bailey said he didn't fully understand the terms, was wrongly told he could refinance after a year and was on the verge of losing his home of 16 years because of unaffordable payments.
No sympathy. No 'Hey I understand, we'll work something out'. No help promised by once predatory lenders. No, none of that from the CEO of a company who lost $1.2 billion and $422 million in the third and fourth quarters of 2007, but who also gets a salary of $1.9 million a year along with $20 million in performance-based stock awards and has since sold $121 million in stock. Instead Angelo Mozilo labels them disgusting.
"This is unbelievable," Mozilo wrote Tuesday. "Most of these letters now have the same wording. Obviously they are being counseled by some other person or by the Internet.
Welcome to the Capitalism of Contempt. Everything is fine as long as a corporation can bleed you dry, but attempt to speak up or speak out or seek help and you are labeled ... well, Angelo knows. Sorry, but this doesn't feel much like a Free Market to me. This instead is another example of Modern Slavery. Not to a Master or a group, but to the Bank, and the Credit Card Company, and the Mortgage Lender. People reduced to nothing more than Serfs working to finance their Lords' new yacht in the Hamptons, or for Angelo's coked out weekend in the Bahamas.