Source:
New York TimesBy REUTERS
California joined Illinois on Wednesday in suing Countrywide Financial, claiming the company had practiced deceptive mortgage lending. The embattled company’s shareholders, meanwhile, approved its takeover by Bank of America.
The civil lawsuits, which also name Countrywide’s chief executive, Angelo R. Mozilo, as a defendant, accuse the lender of engaging in unfair trade practices that encouraged homeowners to take out risky loans, regardless of whether they could repay them.
The lender, based in Calabasas, Calif., became the company most closely associated with the American housing boom, in which mortgages with low teaser rates were seemingly handed out to anyone who asked, as well as the real estate market’s subsequent collapse when mortgage rates rose and shaky borrowers lost their homes to foreclosure.
“Countrywide exploited the American dream of homeownership and then sold its mortgages for huge profits on the secondary market,” California’s attorney general, Jerry Brown, said in a statement.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/business/26lend.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin