Wonkette
You know how the entire U.S. and maybe Global Economy is collapsing, right now? That's all because people like Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo came up with the brilliant idea of giving huge mortgages to people with no down payment and no income and no credit, and then he immediately sold the mortgages to investment banks and hedge funds that chopped up the loans and sold them again and again, so that basically the entire financial system was propped up on trillions of dollars worth of doomed loans that Countrywide knew were worthless, and this whole shell game caused a real-estate bubble that has since popped, wiping out half the house equity in the nation, and meanwhile these same chief executives were taking home hundreds of millions in bonuses for pulling off this fraud operation.
That's why Virginia Congressman Tom Davis wants to make sure these subprime CEOs are treated very well during this difficult time.
Mozilo testified before the House today, along with another two subprime heroes who've already been fired — Citigroup's Charles Prince and Merrill Lynch's E. Stanley O'Neal. Mean old Henry Waxman started yelling at them for being terrible crooks who destroyed capitalism and America, and Tom Davis decided he just wasn't going to have any of this, because it's the same thing as getting off on the ritual sex-murder of virgins!
The panel's top Republican, Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, decried the hearing as a "sanctimonious search for scapegoats."
"Punishing individual corporate executives with public floggings like this may be a politically satisfying ritual — like an island tribe sacrificing a virgin to a grumbling volcano," Mr. Davis said.
And now your editor's Countrywide stock is worth like $4 a share, hooray!
Rep. Davis on CEO Hearings: Like "Sacrificing a Virgin" [Muckraked]
Bank CEOs Defend Personal Windfalls [Dow Jones Newswire]
Comments
I love how "sex murder" is one of the tags on this article, because that happens to be Countrywide's slogan.
Countrywide
"Sex Murder you can believe in."
Ken, your first paragraph is the most cogent summary of the current mortgage situation I've read so far, and I'm in the business. Though you should add that Mozilo took home $410 million for his troubles (and we taxpayers will be bailing out the industry).
Sometimes capitalism works!
Ken, I've always loved your long, long sentences. But this opening must be some kind of record.
Do you thnk any one of these three douches are hurting for cash?
@Pupster: Seconded. Awesome summary.
Gotta admire Tom Davis, though - it cannot be easy to defend someone's right to take home hundereds of millions of Ameros for ripping off the common man, but someone's gotta do it. Future winner of a Congressional Medal of Freedom?
Par for the course.
Here's a video of Rep. Ted Stevens refusing to swear in Oil Company Executives at a congressional hearing where they then proceeded to lie about their participation in Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force:
"+ Watch video
Davis is one of the Republicans who gave Roger Clemens a get-out-of-perjury-free card too. Does he think Congress is just a show, a powerless array of expensive, empty suits asking meaningless questions of celebrities?
Sigh....
aww, ain't them Free Marketeers just cute-as-heck?
Ken, I have to concur. That 1st paragraph was a zinger.
Now as for these crooks and liars, they should be given their golden parachutes over the Pacific.
I have fucked up in my day. I have fucked up royally. Now, I have never fucked up like Msrs. Mozilo, Prince, and O'Neal, but I have done my share.
Not once in my life, amidst a single one of my fuckups, have I ever been rewarded for doing so. I think this is patently unfair, and the real hearings should not focus on these three gentlemen, but on everyone else who has yet to be compensated for their roles in shit getting tore UP.
Elizabeth Kucinich, is dead?
At least I can see her boob. What a lovely one at that.
Excuse me...
Don't we have a ritual sacrifice coming up as soon as Nov? Is it possible that we could find someone less vile than Rep.Tom Davis to perform these duties? Would the good people of the great state of Vagina please fix this!
the invisible hand of capitalism has a stinky finger that smells like butt.
What the hell? I thought President Bush issued an executive order that just made Congress exclusively in charge of professional sports and nothing else. You mean to tell me they can do this other shit, too?
Are you with me, @Dr.Woo: are you really just a shadow of the man that I once knew? Are you crazy, are you high, or just an ordinary guy? Have you done all you can do?
Tsk, tsk. Countrywide shares? Stick to index funds, Ken.
Virgin Barbie Sacrifice Porn.
This housing debacle is hitting my neighborhood pretty hard. During "the boom" when credit was easy and suckers plentiful, speculators were buying up small houses that were on big lots and tearing them down to build McMansions. Now my surrounding neighborhood is littered with for sale signs and not a buyer in sight.
@DanofromRaleigh: The Economist recommended a few years ago to rent rather than buy. They also talked about the tightrope walk of an economy whose monetary liquidity comes from loose credit.
Tom Davis is a caring, sensitive guy.
In order to prevent Terri Schiavo from being taken off of life support, Davis joined in a move by House Repugs to have Schiavo subpoenaed on a gurney and in her vegetative state (and by that I don't mean Florida).
[www.sptimes.com]
Oh, if only we'd have listened to Ron Paul and his ... support of the..unregulated ...free market. Oh, hell.
@TGY: Who regulates financal markets like the sub-prime loan market?
Oh yeah, it's the Federal Reserve.
what, no "I'd hit it" comments?
@Pupster: So which on e of them is part of Bush's family? You mean Neil wasn't in on this?
And just how pissed off do you think the volcano's gonna be when the proffered virgin turns out to be the financial market equivalent to a Tuesday Night Takedown?
@DryFact: Dang them all to heck! Whoever...
@TGY: As I asked Naomi Wolf on HuffPo (before they banned me):
"Why do some disaster capitalists, like Goldman Sachs, make out like bandits, and others lose big, like Merrill Lynch?"
What a fuckwit Davis is. The jobs that should be outsourced to Bangalore are in Congress.
Ahh, yes. This little crisis came home in a particularly intimate fashion today when a ReMax guy knocked on the door of my rented townhouse and asked for my landlords.
I told him that they do not live here, and he told me that the house I am currently living in is scheduled to be auctioned off in a few weeks. Foreclosure. It was an interesting way to find out. He left me holding a business card and staring in shock at my soon-to-be-sold house chock full of stuff that will be difficult and expensive to move.
I'm not sure what to do now -- I had zero plans for moving -- but I'm thinking the most practical thing would be to personally dismantle my townhouse from top to bottom, probably with my bare hands, and force-feed every square inch of it to Rep. Tom Davis. Sound reasonable, everyone?
@Tra: One suggestion? Instead of feeding it, I suggest you make it a house suppository. Forget the lube.
@Gopherit:
Yeah. I wasn't thinking it necessarily had to be through his mouth.
@DryFact:
Yes! Renting would have done the trick ... oh. Wait.
Ain't that America
For you and me,
Ain't that America,
We're something to see, baby,
Ain't that America,
Home of the free;
Little pink houses,
Foreclosed, for you and me.
"Like an island tribe sacrificing a virgin to a grumbling volcano."
Sounds like John McCain's wedding.
We need a GIANT bailout that will dilute the value of the dollar by about 70 percent.
I say this because it's good for America and not because I own 90,000 shares of American Home Mortgage.
@Tra: Didn't we used to put con men in jail? Whatever happened to that concept?
I know he was just making a simile and all, but have any of you ever actually considered that maybe we SHOULD starting sacrificing virgins to appease the Mortgage and Finance gods? I mean, it couldn't possibly make things worse, could it?
@Tra: need any help inserting your house into said congressmen? Sad story. Good luck...
Let me tell you about Richmond, California, the only place in the world outside of Lagos, Nigeria, probably, where you can buy a $650,000 house with a front yard view of an oil refinery. 2 years ago, the speculators were running amuck, buying up 60 year old 900 square foot moldy crapboxes for 400 large, and kicking out the Nicaraguan families of 10 living inside. Now of course, every fifth house has a for-sale sign, and the county is busted because they spent next year's parcel taxes already. The truly forlorn part is that the local vandals are tagging the for sale signs, the ones hanging on those little wooden gallows the realtors hammer into the ground. I'm glad to know that the executives responsible for this debacle are being well compensated...
What happened to the good old days when Corporate CEO's were kidnapped and held for ransom?
All of this is filling me with a sense of dread: maybe we should put out an Amber Alert for Mr. Bill.
It's cool, Ken, my stock's all in WaMu.
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