Open season on Countrywide

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Good morning again. It is October 1st, which must mean it is now officially open season on Countrywide -- New York Times columnist Paul Krugman piles on this morning, with a column entitled ‘Enron’s Second Coming?’

Krugman: ‘So far, nobody has accused (Countrywide CEO Angelo) Mozilo of breaking the law. Still, what we’re learning from the housing mess is that the crisis of corporate governance, which made headlines in the early years of this decade, never went away.’

Due either to an early deadline, poor research, or institutional arrogance, Krugman neglects to mention Kathy Kristof’s story in the LATimes late Friday, which reported that Mozilo twice changed his trading plan recently to increase the number of Countrywide shares he was selling every month.

Our take: Fair enough, someone has to be the poster boy for this mess, and Countrywide is the biggest mortgage company, and Mozilo one of the industry’s biggest and best-compensated personalities, so -- tag, he is it. That said, we will offer a defense, of sorts: the one person who most deserves to make a pile of money off of a company’s growth is the person who founded the company. It’s a bad joke when hired guns like Robert Nardelli make obscene amounts of money. Mozilo is not a hired gun; he co-founded Countrywide and built it; even in its weakened state, the company is valued by investors at $11 billion.

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Photo Credit: Reuters
Hat tip: Hula Girl