Also a “friend of Angelo”: Sen. Chris Dodd
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To quote my favorite comment of recent days, ‘You cannot stop Angelo Mozilo, you can only hope to contain him.’*
From Portfolio.com today: ‘Two U.S. senators, two former Cabinet members and a former ambassador to the United Nations received loans from Countrywide Financial through a little-known program that waived points, lender fees and company borrowing rules for prominent people.’
Backstory: This appears to be the same ‘friends of Angelo’ program in which former Obama campaign adviser Jim Johnson participated. Angelo being, of course, Countrywide Financial co-founder Angelo Mozilo.
More from Portfolio: ‘Senators Christopher Dodd (pictured), Democrat from Connecticut and chairman of the Banking Committee, and Kent Conrad, Democrat from North Dakota, chairman of the Budget Committee and a member of the Finance Committee, refinanced properties through Countrywide’s ‘V.I.P.’ program in 2003 and 2004, according to company documents and emails and a former employee familiar with the loans.
‘Other participants in the V.I.P. program included former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, and former U.N. ambassador and assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke. Jackson was deputy H.U.D. secretary in the Bush administration when he received the loans in 2003. Shalala, who received two loans in 2002, had by then left the Clinton administration for her current position as president of the University of Miami. She is scheduled to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom on June 19.’
Crazy, huh? Say this for Angelo Mozilo, the butcher’s son: He learned how the game is played in Washington, and he played it well.
Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com.
Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images
*For those who don’t know, that line from ESPN’s Sportscenter, for reasons to juvenile to go into, is considered by many American males to be the wittiest line of the past generation.