What We're Hearing

Connie Bruck, who penned one of the best books ever written about junk bond king Michael Milken ('Predator's Ball') is working on a story for The New Yorker about Countrywide Home Loans founder Angelo Mozilo. The article is supposed to hit the newsstands next week but a researcher at the magazine contacted National Mortgage News about a few fact-checking items. It appears that Ms. Bruck may have some of her numbers wrong as to when Countrywide became the nation's largest residential lender. Then again, that's a tricky one to answer. Readers of NMN might recall that CFC dominated the residential servicing and origination market for many years until earlier in this decade when Wells Fargo and Washington Mutual (now defunct) both went on a bank/non-bank buying spree, pushing Countrywide down in the ranks. Eventually, though, CFC became number one again -- thanks to its aggressive use of loan brokers and correspondents and its ties to Fannie Mae. Mr. Mozilo was recently sued (along with two other former CFC executives) by the Securities and Exchange Commission which accused him of insider trading and civil fraud. Research being conducted for the paperback version of 'Chain of Blame, How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis' reveals that former CFC president Stanford Kurland tried to steer Countrywide away from high LTV subprime lending but Mr. Kurland lost the battle and eventually left the company…