Former Countrywide Exec Heads Firm Targeting Troubled Mortgages

Source: Associated Press

"LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Stanford Kurland spent nearly three decades helping build Countrywide Financial Corp. into the nation's largest mortgage lender.

Now, the former president of the troubled company and several key colleagues hope to cash in as the housing market collapses. Kurland, 55, will serve as chairman and chief executive officer of a new company unveiled Monday that will acquire and restructure distressed mortgages.

Private National Mortgage Acceptance Co. LLC, also known as PennyMac, intends to help borrowers restructure loans so they can avoid foreclosure and maintain payments.

"We'll look to restructure mortgages, and as soon as the loans are reperforming, and if there's the capability and the market liquidity, we'll look to sell," Kurland told The Associated Press. "Other properties that may take longer, we're prepared to hold five to seven years."

I wonder how the high-flying executives of Countrywide are able to get away with such acts and it just shows that we don't live in a perfect world. It's all about opportunity, risk and reward. They saw an opportunity to relax lending rules, draw on the entire line of credit at Countrywide and get borrowers deep into debt (beyond what they could afford to repay) and made a personal fortune doing so. Now there is opportunity to get the same borrower out of trouble and probably pass on the buck to the tax payer while doing so. I have always supported getting the over extended borrower out of the debt trap (they should not have been there in the first place) and those that put them there deserve punishment but if the very same people want to get rewarded for doing so, may be it ends well for the over extended borrower as well and in today's business environment, they won't be a non-profit trying to get a struggling borrower out of the very same trouble they put the person in. Question for all of them to ask is.. look back and see whether any of their actions in the past, present and future is/was/will be with the borrower in mind- answer is a simple "no".