Not only were our political masters getting favorable interest rates from Countrywide, but the mortgage giant they were supposed to be regulating also made it a practice to waive the "junk" fees they stick to the rest of us.
According to Feinberg and company documents, V.I.P.’s nearly always received better deals than those available to most borrowers. Countrywide often waived up to two points and eliminated fees amounting to hundreds of dollars for underwriting, processing, and document preparation. Internal company emails often referred to these fees as “junk” or “garbage.” If interest rates fell while a V.I.P. loan was pending, Countrywide provided a free float-down to the lower rate, eschewing its usual charge of half a point. Some V.I.P.’s who bought or refinanced investment properties were given the lower interest rate reserved for primary residences. Because Mozilo informally preapproved his F.O.A.’s, many of them barely bothered to document their assets and enjoyed exceptions to normal procedures or shortcuts around them.
If you're a homeowner and that doesn't make your blood boil, you may already be in a cool homicidal rage. There's no way that this special treatment isn't bribery of the most pernicious kind, and every, every "friend of Angelo" of either party who participated should be thrown in prison. Pleading ignorance doesn't keep us peasants out of jail, and the people who make the laws should be held to at least as high a standard.
(HT: Instapundit.)
