mortgage meltdown

When Countrywide Financial created deeply flawed mortgage-backed securities, it wasn't just selling bad financial products: It was breaking its contracts. Now some ordinary investors are suing Countrywide's buyer, Bank of America, to force it to repurchase those bad mortgages. That's their right, but there's nothing simple about this case, or its ramifications.

Nope, Angelo Mozilo won't be serving time, no matter what the evidence shows. In fact, he won't even face a trial. Wondering how the most convictable CEO among the titans who brought down the financial system is getting off so easy? The answer lies in the revolving door between Wall Street and its "regulators."

Banks created the Mortgage Electronic Registration System to save themselves a boatload in fees by keeping mortgage transfers off the books of local governments. Now, a New York judge says the whole system violates state law, and banks holding MERS mortgages there can't foreclose. Where will this disaster go from here?

Allstate is suing Bank of America and its Countrywide Financial division over Countrywide's sale of $700 million in mortgage-backed securities to the insurance giant, alleging that Countrywide knew in advance that the assets would drop in value because of a high percentage of defaults.

Wilmington Trust shares plummeted 44% in morning trading Monday as the struggling East coast institution announced M&T Bank would acquire the company in a stock transaction valued at $351 million.

Wells Fargo still won't admit it, but its employees' testimony makes it clear that, like GMAC, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and OneWest Bank, they have a problem with their foreclosure documents. But the solution isn't just a better documentation process: It's time to bring back cram downs.

The mortgage-backed securities meltdown whose effects still haunt our economy sprang from a simple cause: The rules of the game gave big incentives to every player involved to ignore the problems and keep collecting their fees. And despite financial reform, those rules haven't changed much.

Countrywide Financial, once the nation's largest mortgage lender, has agreed to pay $600 million to settle shareholder lawsuits. It's the largest mortgage settlement to come out of the meltdown so far.

In the coming years, many books will be written about the subprime fiasco -- most of them reported from the outside of the bubble looking in. If the authors look close enough, they might see Edmund L. Andrews staring back out at them. It will be hard for any chronicle of the bubble to match the...