One-Third Of CountryWide Sub-Prime Loans Are Bad
One-third of all of Countrywide’s sub-prime mortgage loans are delinquent. Holy smoke! That’s a lot more than they led everyone to believe.
Countrywide on Tuesday reported a loss of $422 million in the fourth quarter and revealed that an astounding one-third of its investment portfolio’s sub-prime mortgage loans are delinquent.
The loss threw cold water on Countrywide chief operating officer Steve Sambol’s confident assurances to investors in October that, “We view the third quarter of 2007 as an earnings trough, and anticipate that the company will be profitable in the fourth quarter and in 2008.” Seen in this light, Countrywide’s fourth-quarter loss, compared to a $621 million profit a year ago, is what the numerous class action attorneys circling Countrywide (CFC, Fortune 500) will surely call “an unfavorable fact.” Countywide finished 2007 with a loss of $704 million.
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Countrywide’s eye-popping 33% delinquency rate on its sub-prime mortgage book also represents a decline from the third quarter, where “only” 29.6% of sub-prime paper was delinquent.
The figures obscure a central fact, however: Countrywide’s portfolio of sub-prime loans consist of those that were not previously written down, or could not be sold or securitized. In other words, this portfolio is likely to get much, much worse.
That percentage is bound to increase by huge margins over the course of the next few months. What on Earth would possess Bank Of America to absorb that kind of debt? Everyone knows those foreclosures will not sell anywhere near the value of the home. Are they looking for huge tax write-offs in the next few years? I just don’t get it.
Plowing Through Life
What? Why didn’t they put him to work? All they had to do was add a snowblower attachment to the mower and tell him that the liquor store across town was having a hell of a sale. He would have cleaned the streets for free.
A man was charged with drunken driving after going through two bottles of wine, cutting through a snowstorm on his lawn mower and riding down the center of the street to reach a liquor store, authorities said.
Police found Frank Kozumplik, 49, homeward bound on a John Deere tractor Saturday night, toting four bottles of wine in a paper bag, officials said.
Now, instead of performing a community service, they have to spend resources to confiscate the mower, arrest him, put him on trial, convict him, either house him or monitor him, and for what? For operating a piece of machinery while under the influence, a piece of machinery that does not require a driver’s license in the first place.
I guess he’s just lucky they didn’t charge him for any crimes involving a deadly weapon.
Countrywide Runs From Scrutiny
Imagine that. Countrywide didn’t just sell itself to Bank Of America to avoid certain bankruptcy, they did so to try and escape the wrath of government regulators who smelled a rat.
Countrywide Financial Corp’s (CFC.N) decision to sell itself to Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) was driven in part by fear of potential crackdowns by regulators, the Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site on Monday.
The largest U.S. mortgage lender had been convulsed by mounting losses and a lack of access to capital. But a more pressing danger was increased pressure from regulators, politicians and credit-rating firms, the paper said.
Regulators and politicians were not the only ones who smelled a rat. I bet a majority of the people who held Countrywide mortgages new something was up and were just waiting for the ball to drop. You have to know that your customers are on to you when you start refusing to accept certified letters that are being sent to you.
It sounds like there was more to the story as well.
Rapid growth in consumer bank deposits at Countrywide meanwhile raised the potential of greater scrutiny from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Countrywide also was dealing with a series of investigations by state attorneys general and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Wow. The lending and their banking divisions were under scrutiny. No wonder they ran so fast to BofA.
The Cure For Deafness: Get New Doctors
This kid’s parents have been telling the doctors that they thought something was stuck in their son’s ear. For 10 years, this kid grew up thinking he was half-deaf. It sounds more like his doctors were half brain dead.
An 11-year-old boy from Britain, who was partially deaf for nearly 10 years, was suddenly cured when a thick piece of cotton popped out of his ear, according to a report in the Daily Mail.
Jerome Bartens was diagnosed as deaf in his right ear when he was just two-years-old.
Over the next nine years, he struggled to live a normal life as a young boy — but everything changed when he felt a sudden pop in his right ear while playing a game of pool with friends.
He put his finger in his ear and pulled out a tip of a cotton wool bud that had been wedged in his ear since he was a toddler.
Why didn’t they look? You can’t tell me that the cotton wool bud would have been invisible. Thank God the kid wasn’t playing with a gun 10 years ago, he would have died before the doctors found the bullet.
Sphere: Related ContentWhat Is Heartache Worth To You?
No one believed Yoshi had a girlfriend in the first place, but now he gets to take time off for his ‘heartache’? Sheesh. I wonder if you have to prove you had a relationship in the first place, of if it’s one of those ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ type things?
Lovelorn staff at a Japanese marketing company can take paid time off after a bad break-up with a partner, with more “heartache leave” on offer as they get older.
Tokyo-based Hime & Company, which also gives staff paid time off to hit the shops during sales season, says heartache leave allows staff to cry themselves out and return to work refreshed. “Not everyone needs to take maternity leave but with heartbreak, everyone needs time off, just like when you get sick,” CEO Miki Hiradate, whose company of six women markets cosmetics and other goods targeted for women, told Reuters by telephone.
Staff aged 24 years or younger can take one day off per year, while those between 25 and 29 can take two days off and those older can take three days off, the company said.
Man, at my age I could get three days off per year for heartache. If Bionic Woman is indeed cancelled this season, I am definitely taking my time.
Sphere: Related ContentLearning And Losing All In The Same Place
McDonald’s same store sales seem to be slumping but you can bank on the fact that UK sales will double or even triple as parents show up to purchase items from their kids who are learning on the job.
McDonald’s Corp (MCD.N), the world’s largest restaurant chain operator, on Monday posted flat U.S. same-store sales in December, sending its shares down 8 percent and weighing on the entire restaurant sector.
McDonald’s cited softer consumer spending and severe winter weather for the flat U.S. December sales at restaurants open at least 13 months.
That result, the weakest monthly U.S. sales number since the company posted a decline in March 2003, spooked investors — who worried that consumers had begun cutting back on spending at inexpensive and traditionally recession-resistant fast food chains.
One thing I do love about the new McDonald’s near us, is that they have free wi-fi, and I can sit there and just relax and watch all the different people coming in and out in an effort to clog their arteries. Very cool.
One mistake I see many McDonald’s restaurants making, is their attempt to become more “upscale”. Keep the menu simple. It works.
Sphere: Related ContentWorking Your Way Through School
And you thought only high school drop-outs worked at McDonald’s. Little did you know when they screwed up your cheeseburger they were getting bad grades.
McDonald’s employees trained in skills needed to run outlets for the fast-food chain can get credit toward high school diplomas, the British government said Monday.
Along with two other large companies, McDonald’s Corp. was given the power to award the equivalent of advanced high-school qualifications as part of a plan to improve young people’s skills, said the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, a government education regulator.
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The fast-food chain had been granted approval to develop courses and set exams up to the standard of A-levels - the final exams taken by high school students that determine college and university admission.
So what’s the next step in this process? College at 7-Eleven? Graduate school at the WaWa?
The New American Dream?
Thanks to a greedy banking industry, this is the American dream of the new millennium.
The streets are empty. Trash rustles down the road past rusted barbecues, abandoned furniture, sagging homes and gardens turned to weed.
This is Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland and a town ravaged by the subprime mortgage crisis roiling the United States.
Faded “for sale” signs sit in front of deserted houses. The residents are gone, either in search of new jobs after the factories shut down, or in shame after being evicted for missing their mortgage payments.
A red, white and blue American flag flies over windows and doors which have been boarded up to keep the drug dealers away.
Thieves have stripped many homes of the plumbing, the doors, the windows, the aluminum siding.
I’m sure Shaker Heights is not alone. You can bank that there are many different “ghost towns” all over the country thanks to the shady deals, and the “relaxed” rules that allowed all this to happen in the first place. Sure, people should have read through their documents more carefully, but the truth of the matter is many people didn’t catch that “adjustable” part because the mortgage companies did everything they could to make sure they didn’t see it.
There are three abandoned houses in our area. No one has said anything, but it’s been months since we’ve seen the owners and the for sale signs look like they have been there since before the houses were built. It’s a shame, because all three families were nice people, who had good jobs, but just couldn’t afford getting screwed by the bank time and time again.
Sphere: Related ContentOne Leg Too Many
I’ve seen a cat with six or even seven toes but I have never seen one with five legs.
Cats may have nine lives, but one unique feline has five legs - for now.
The cat, named Babygirl, will have surgery to remove the extra leg and another crippled leg, though the operation has not yet been scheduled.
The surgery is expected to leave the cat with three legs, and improve her quality of life, according to the Washington Area Humane Society, where the cat will live until a home can be found for her.
I love it that they say the 5-legged cat will have two legs removed and the surgery is “expected” to leave the cat with three legs. I should hope so. Then again I have never been too good with fuzzy math.
Sphere: Related ContentAnother Stupid ‘Ad Based’ Music Service
Wow. Another company beat Yahoo’s attempt to re-invent the wheel.
Qtrax, a new legal online file-sharing service that allows fans to download songs for free, said on Sunday it will launch with 25 million to 30 million copyrighted tracks with backing from major labels.
The free service will be funded through advertising revenue that Qtrax will share with the music companies.
Qtrax executives said the company’s digital rights management technology will count the number of times each song has been played in order to fairly compensate artists and rights’ holders, without restricting consumer use.
The company has focused on ensuring that its network is free of spyware or adware such as pop-ups common on many peer-to-peer networks to improve the customer experience.
Any new “service” that requires me to download their software and subject myself to an untold number of ads is not innovative. It’s stupid.
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