Obama’s Countrywide Subprime Mortgage Connection

June 10, 2008 · Filed Under News 


Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson is tight with Barack Obama. He was just tapped as one of three people on Obama’s vice presidential search team.

Johnson also has close ties to and loans from Countrywide Financial Corp., a company hit by subprime mortgages and loan problems.

Additionally, the Countrywide lending practices and CEO compensation are under scrutiny.

James Johnson was part of an elite group known as “friends of Angelo” (Countrywide Financial co-founder Angelo Mozilo), and he got more than $7 million in “special loans” from Countrywide.

These loans were below market averages, according to the Wall Street Journal.

This is one of those companies that Obama has been railing against, at least in public.

Obama has blasted Countrywide’s executives as “the people who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis,” at a town hall meeting in Lancaster, PA this past March.

So it seems pretty disingenuous that Obama would engage in cronyism with Jim Johnson if Obama is going to bring change to politics.

More details in the New York Sun.

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