2008-01-01smartmoney.com

"If you weren't able to tap the federal home loan banking system, you went under," says Miller. "If [Countrywide] hadn't gone out and gotten a bank charter a couple of years ago, they would not have survived this."

...

In October, Countrywide backtracked a bit on its aggressive tactics, letting about 52,000 subprime borrowers refinance their homes with prime mortgages or ones set up under a federal plan to prevent foreclosures. It also gave better terms to another 30,000 homeowners who were falling behind in payments but had not yet defaulted.

It was a decent enough public-relations move, but it doesn't begin to address the company's biggest troubles: There aren't any buyers for the packages of loans it hoped to sell to big investment banks and other financial institutions. That's where Countrywide and other mortgage lenders were burned by following market dictates, says FBR's Miller.

A pretty could Countrywide "will they survive or won't they" article. No mention of possible looming writedowns beyond subprime...



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