Bank Of America Still "Reaping The Benefits Of What Countrywide Hath Sowed"
Remember, back in '08, when Angelo Mozilo cried while telling a bunch of Countrywide shareholders that Bank of America, which had just bought the place, would "reap the benefits of what we have sowed"? Obviously that was was Moz-Speak for "you're about to find out what it's like to be forcibly sodomized for all eternity," but at the time, some people wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was leaving some neat stuff behind, like buried treasure or something. We now know that, actually, one of the things that the home lender had been "sowing" for a number of years was the basis of a Department of Justice investigation into the fact that the company made it a policy to dick over Hispanic and black people, one of the many gifts Brian Moynihan has been unwrapping since he took over.
Bank of America agreed to a record $335 million settlement of a U.S. Justice Department probe into fair-lending lapses at its Countrywide Financial Corp. mortgage unit. Countrywide discriminated from 2004 to 2008 by charging higher fees and interest rates to more than 200,000 black and Hispanic borrowers and steered minority borrowers into subprime mortgages, the DOJ said in a statement today. The accord is tied to an investigation into mortgages made by Countrywide, acquired in 2008 by Charlotte, North Carolina- based Bank of America. The second-biggest U.S. bank by deposits has spent billions of dollars to clean up liabilities inherited from Countrywide, which once ranked as the nation’s biggest home lender. Bank of America has committed about $40 billion for mortgage refunds, lawsuits and foreclosures since 2007, with most of the sum tied to alleged defects in the loans that affected investors, rather than discrimination against customers.
“We reached this settlement to resolve issues about Countrywide’s alleged historic practices that occurred before Bank of America acquired the company,” said Dan Frahm, a company spokesman. “We are committed to fair and equal treatment of all our customers, and will continue to focus on doing what’s right for our customers, clients and communities. We discontinued Countrywide products and practices that were not in keeping with our commitment.”
Now that that's taken care, what else have we got on the list? The mortgage and foreclosure stuff, obviously, but there are probably a half a dozen or so other Moz items that need dealing with, no? Surely there must some love children Brian needs to make go away? This can't be all there is.
BofA Agrees to $335M Lending Settlement [Bloomberg]
Related: “When he tans Angelo gets really dark. My mother told me that when he worked in Florida he was asked to sit in the back of the bus.”
