Hah! Turns out Countrywide does indeed farm out its loans to individual private investors, and here's the kicker: Countrywide GUARANTEES a buy-back of all of these loans should the mortgagee fail to pay or goes into default. The beauty of this arrangement is that Countrywide, despite Bank of America's foolishness, doesn't have the money to buy back these loans, and the rash of foreclosures happening now, with more to come, demands, yep, a gummint bail-out.
So, screw the mortgagee, Countrywide will not, cannot, re-negotiate these loans, and, as a result, will become the largest property-owner in the country backed by the full faith and credit of the US Taxpayer. Why izzit that the only losers here are the little guys?
I already match my company's 401K contributions, I rent an apartment [so no mortgage], and I have exactly one credit card and pay the full balance every month. Visa hasn't gotten anything out of me but the annual membership fee of $25. 
I also have enough money saved that I could survive at least a year before I had to ask my folks for help if something happened to my job.
I guess I'm as ready as I can be.
Yeah, my partner and I have distrusted the economic data since 2001, when the Bushies started gaming it all.
So, we stuck with an old-fashioned mortgage and we dump as much as we can into our respective retirements. Any unexpected income gets thrown on the mortage. Tax returns go into supplemental IRAs.
Economies run in cycles of boom and bust. Translation? The bear is ALWAYS waiting for you to screw up.
That bear is scaring me! :-(
I was in the middle of a refi with Countrywide when they borrowed that 200M or was it B? I have a mortgage, my first on my own, and it was very risky to me to do it. I did an 80(trad. fixed)/20 (heloc variable) to get this townhouse 4 years ago. Risky to me because I didn't have a down payment yet could easliy afford to make the mortgage payments. Our market is sky high rents and always high housing prices. It wasn't a subprime loan and I honestly don't know how those who got them signed their names to such documents.
Anyway, I was in a quandry for a year knowing either I sell or flip it into a 100% fixed as the interest rate on the heloc was a big question mark and had doubled since I got it. I wasn't ready to sell, because it was a fixer and I've spend 4 years doing the fixing, mostly myself. Suddenly, this spring/summer selling season saw hundreds of homes come on the market here. They were selling slow, and now its flat as a pancake; so I wait.
I refinanced a couple weeks ago at 75% of the appraised value, paid off that bofa heloc (ugh) and the credit card I used for the 4 years of fixits. One payment, fixed, traditionl mortgage at a decent rate..... still with Countrywide. I plan on hunkering down in this place for two more years and see what its like then.
Mine was a risky loan only to me and those 4 years with that 20% variable was enough for me. I have no net, plus our mandatory retirement was taking 3% 4 years ago, now at 9.1%. Every raise I got for the last 4 years was immediatly taken by retirement. This year I actually may see some of it as they only took an additional .5%. Its been just crazy between the constant construction mode, the variable interest rate and the retirement fund taking every penny extra. I don't know what I was thinking!
I do feel relief having flipped it to fixed, having rooms in livable condition, and having that retirement plan cut us all a break this year. I am still concerned how this mortgage/economy drama will play out though. I think I've done all I can to position myself to get through. I started over with nothing 15 years ago and I could do it again if I need to. I hope that won't be necessary!
you are watching the biggest wealth transfer in history folks, strap in this is going to be huge.
Angelo Mozilo has cashed out over $200 million of his Countrywide stock!
Countrywide owns 2.5 Billion dollars worth of property:
http://countrywide-foreclosures....s.blogspot.com/
check out these graphs and get your cash OUT of country wide!
Sorry, I was wrong! Mozilo sold $425 million worth of stock!
http://www.zimbio.com/
CEO+Angelo...zilo+stock+sale
I'm poor (fucking graduate school), but I'm not in debt.
I completely agree with you about paying cash or going without. After I finished up my active duty hitch, I went to college. As I didn't know dick about college, I didn't declare a major to begin with. Which meant I had to take some dumb-ass "general studies" course required of all undeclared students. One day, someone came in to talk to us about managing debt. I didn't owe a penny to anyone in the world at the time, so I was just intellectually curious about the presentation.
Some lady came in and told a room full of 18-year-olds (and me) about how to use credit cards well. Which left my jaw on the fucking floor. How about you tell these unemployed white kids not to pay for shit they can't afford? Instead of telling people how to get out of debt, why not teach them how to fucking avoid it in the first place?
So, yeah. Don't buy shit you don't need and can't afford. You're just gonna ensure that Citibank ends up giving you 14 1/2" with no Vaseline if you do otherwise.
Myrtle,
You've done every reasonable thing to get your housing situation straightened out. Now you need to be recession planning, since that's the direction the economy is heading. Save as much as you can in instruments which are easy to liquidate without a loss. No equities, securities only.
Angelo Mozilo has cashed out over $200 million of his Countrywide stock.
Wrong it was 400m in 2 years.
Michael Lewis, this is funny/sad
Everyone should to read CR it's about $ in a language everyone understand even me.
jo6pac
Thanks Melanie, I'll work on that next.
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