Mozilo: 'No one predicted' current housing bust

Today is Angelo Mozilo's special day to talk to Congress about his paycheck and his company and his unique view of current events. His prepared remarks are here, and this is how CNN/Money is covering the hearing so far:

"Two high-profile former Wall Street CEOs and the head of the nation's largest home lender defended their oversized pay packages to congressional lawmakers Friday, arguing that recent reports grossly exaggerated their compensation in some instances.  'In short, as our company did well, I did well,' Countrywide's Angelo Mozilo (pictured) said."

What struck me in reading Mozillo's prepared testimony was not the stuff about compensation, but his account of the current housing mess: "The problem that we face today was unanticipated and is much more severe than any cycle in the past. ... It bears noting that no one predicted the severity and force of the housing downturn that followed."

Wow. Angelo. What color is the sky in your world? On the planet where I live (nice blue sky today), all manner of people have been predicting a housing crash for years. Lots of them even wrote down their predictions on things called blogs. Have you ever heard of an economist in L.A. named Christopher Thornberg? Books like "Sell Now! The End of the Housing Bubble"? Blogs like Patrick.net?

Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com
Photo Credit: Associated Press

Comments

[Lou]

Mozillo just basically admitted that all the execs at Countrywide are mentally retarded.

[areles]

Any man with a fake tan that dark deserves to be flogged, regardless of what nonsense is spilling out of his mouth.

And this, this is nonsense. Obviously.

All the phoney baloney "oh noez we didn't see it coming" bears a striking and uncanny resemblance to "what? no WMDs?" and "what? Hussein didn't take down the towers?"

The housing bubble and subsequent crash was obvious from 2003, just like the dot.com crash was obvious from 1998, just like the outcome of this mess of a war was obvious from 2002.

If I could see it coming, you damn well know the industry did.

Hoping the bubble doesn't burst is not the same thing as not seeing it coming. I am fed up to here with all these lies, and with the lemmings who gobble them up.

If we were Mexico or China, we would've taken to the streets already.

[Jim in San Diego]

Would you expect Mozilo to admit this was foreseeable? Of course not. He has a fortune to protect and a lifestyle that would be crimped by a stint at Club Fed.

I expect any public utterances by Mr. Mozilo will be thoroughly vetted by $500 per hour types.

[Drew]

No one "predicted" the housing downturn.

Just as no one could have "predicted" the 9/11 attacks.

Perhaps we need people in positions of power in business and government that have just a bit more foresight.

[JohnnyB]

Con Artist

A bag of gold and a bag of rice
Both were sold at the same marked price
The merchant told me with the waves of his hands
That gold was of high value in distant lands

I could buy it here from him and now
Then travel afar somehow
And try to sell what I was sold
To learn from him the truth be told

But rice was what I needed and valued
Not some believes that greed has fueled
So I bought the rice with what I had
And dismissed that gold was just in fad

He scolded me for being a fool
Saying “what have you learned in school?”
And offered me a lower price for his gold
In hope that his words could be sold

But I was no fool, I said to him
I recognized friends and foes per diem
With that I went on my way
This argument I saved for another day

Apollo GT

[toby]

Did Mozilo work for the Tobacco Industry?

No? Well he has a bright future with them then.

[Joshua Reyes]

How absurd! Is this guy stuck in the 50's?!

[Cal]

"What color is the sky in your world?"

I'm guessing everything in Angelo''s world is tinted orange. Don't know why ;-)

Well I didn't predict the housing bust, I had a good down, great job and all the recipe to buy. But I didn't understand the market, I learned from 2000 to not participate in a market I didn't understand. So in early 2006 instead of buying, I started learning. I'll have to admit the data I was looking at didn't fit the market place as I was seeing it (the lenders were granting so many exceptions to guidelines, that was the hidden variable) but since I didn't understand it I chose to wait. Early 2007 everything started making a lot more sense.

Now I have a much better feel for what is going on I have a green light to buy in that regard but the data is clearly showing that waiting is the smarter strategy. I might try and cherry pick something along the way but it is really looking like late-2009 and beyond before the effects of having to deal with reality moves the market back into any semblance of normalcy in regards to pricing.

[lefty]

hey guys, this is even better than a sale at neiman-marcus! make some offers in fantastic metro L.A. today, where the sun and the stars play!! then have a nice espresso, good luck everybody!

[phil]

"In short, as our company did well, I did well"

You gambled. Period. You won, then you lost.
In Las Vegas, when you lose, you return what you won.

[Dharma of the Desert]

Any man who insists that all of the window coverings on company windows must be closed at the same height knows only too well that what was going on in the mortgage banking industry. Wasn't he around in the 90's when this happened before? I was an underwriter in on of this Sub Prime Divisions. Along with higher interest rates, the customer had to pay outrageous fees that should be illegal.. Mr. M is definetly the "Ken Lay" of the Industry. He has no shame and is laughing all the way to the bank.

[Guido]

Looks like someone got a little too much sun. It must be making him dizzy, clouding his thought process to the point of oblivion.
No, seriously this is a bold face lie. This whole mess stinks from the top down to the fools who bought $1 mil houses on a $100k a year salary.

[TrojanDLA]

LOL just like when Vanilla Ice was asked, "Don't you think your song 'Ice Ice Baby' bears a striking resemblance to Queen's 'Under Pressure'?" His response was: "They're totally different, totally."

The disingenuous nature of Mozilio's response insults the intelligence of every American.

[IToldu2CashOut]

I feel bad for this guy. He didn't know. Someone in the government please please cut him a check for a few billion dollars.

If we the tax payers of the United States can't take care of the mentally retarded billionaires who will?

[CD]

Good call Peter. Thank god for Patrick.net, I owe my life to that guy....He was laughed out of town when he predicted this mess. They also do not believe we are in a recession. What recession????
I read Nouriel Roubini last night.He just came back from Dubai.....Bad news. Spent $200 at the market this morning and got nothing in my basket....
I am very worried.

[smtula]

I'm quite confident that Mr. Mozillo went to DC well prepared to: (1) not just wash off his hands using the ignorance claim BUT to (2) make sure that you and I will pay for his company's mistakes through a government bailout. His line is simple. The bursting housing bubble is like an earthquake, nobody can be blamed for it, so Congress should dip into pockets of taxpayers, so that unscrupulous overlending can go on. This way we ensure that he always gets paid a lot whether it’s the taxpayers or homeowners who have to come with $$$ to support his ambitions. 'Too big to fail' is what he was telling himself while on a plane to DC. We just can kick back and watch how he talks Congress into using our money to clean up the mess that the likes of Mr. Mozillo created. We’ll be doing this while sitting in houses that we overpaid for thanks to cheap financing that flooded out of Countrywide in the last several years.

[campechano]

I applaud Waxman and other democratic members of Congress for at the very least atempting to hold these people accountable. Shame on them. This ISNT Latin America, this is the United States of America and we want JUSTICE. Make these people pay...on whatver grounds...

[G-mann]

A. Mozilo likes pin striped suits and fancy suites. I say the FEDS aught to reserve a suite for him at club fed and give him a special tailored striped suit. Seriously: He stripped his company of its assets and stole the value of the company from the investors as he screwed the home buyers with over weighted mortgages! I hope the Feds get him before he flees to his castle in Switzerland!

[vultur]

>>.. It bears noting that no one predicted the severity and force of the housing downturn that followed."<<

This is what I read:

.. It bears noting that no one [without a personal vested interest in the value of the mortgages being written who was unaccountable for the ridiculous underwriting standards and who generated enormous fees, commissions and short term profits for their company that resulted in outrageous bonuses that all but ate away at any retained earnings and basically bankrupted the company for future years when the market would return to normal] predicted the severity and force of the housing downturn that followed."

[bode]

All I will note is that much more money appears to have been lost in this crisis than made. That tells me that the crisis has exceeded expectations significantly. Investment banks don't hire dumb people to ignore risks and lose the company's money. It's easy to armchair quarterback it right now -- I just want to know how many people shorted Thornburg Mortgage last week and just made a 10x return in 5 days? Obvious is only easy in hindsight with a bubble.

[CC]

If what he said was true, it confirms my belief that stupid people can do more damages than crooks.

[KenyLayinHel]

Who said Ken Lay was dead??? He just changed his name to Mozilo!

"I Know nuthin, nuthing!!!!"

Who could have predicted that the housing market would tank when only 15% of the population in Metro CA can afford to buy???

I mean, I never saw this coming!! You're telling me that house in South Central ain't worth $800k? But it sold for $800k in 2005 and then $900k in 2006!

[Desmo]

Don't you think your song 'Ice Ice Baby' bears a striking resemblance to Queen's 'Under Pressure'

That song was from David Bowie.

Let's see I sold my house (Valencia) in October 2005 and have rented since. I was shocked prices fell after that including on my old house (20% so far), shocked I tell ya........

[ItJustCameOutOfTheBlue]

"No one predicted' - my ass!!!

Maybe Tangelo Mozilla should have tried reading Housing Panic or the thousands of other housing blogs on the web, or tried listening to some economists like Peter Schiff or maybe read one of Ron Paul's books?!!!

Plenty of people predicted this mess it's just that it wasn't the so called experts and media pundits or the worshipped Fed chairmen Greenspan and Bernanke.

[bottom line]

I thought "The Creature From the Black Lagoon" had passed away recently?

[Dave]

What a bunch of crap, didn't see it coming. Isn't that what they pay you that 7 figure salary for, to anticipate what the market will do and steer your company so it doesn't crump? Isn't that the first rule of management?

A bigger bunch of crap is when Bush says, we anticipated the recession and passed a stimulus package 3 weeks ago. THREE WEEKS? Again, you and people in Congress should have been monitoring this problem starting FIVE YEARS ago. Isn't that what your job is, seeing where the economy is headed and guiding it so it doesn't crump?

[boz skaggs]

They all knew.

According to one of the congressmen today in th hearing, one of Countrywide's pools of mortgages from 2006 had a default rate of 18% on the very first payment!!! Meaning that of that investment grade rated pool of assets sold to insurance companies, 1 in 5 borrowers failed to even make the very first payment!!!

How in the world wasn't this front page news?

If nothing else, it makes it extremely easy to understand why the market for these pools dried up before the media caught on. It also makes it easy to believe that the banks are in FAR WORSE SHAPE than the market understands.

[joe]

My wife works for Countrywide great programs still and a strong company after aquisition. I have no problems with Mozilo wife is making high six figures. The market will come back in a few years and all will be well again.

[Sweetie Pie]

My spouse worked for Angelo Mozillo. When the sub-primes were being touted as the Next Big Thing, he registered his displeasure every chance he got. He came home from work telling me he thought sub-primes were a BAD IDEA. For his trouble, his review referred to him as 'not a team player.' After the first round of job cuts he was let go. Angelo Mozillo is shocked, shocked about the housing market taking a dive. He's still collecting his winnings.

[areles]

"Obvious is only easy in hindsight with a bubble."

I could not disagree more strongly with this. It was obvious from the beginning, and I've been saying as much for years.

Houses do NOT appreciate in the double digits year over year. Period. If they do, it's a bubble. And bubbles deflate. There's no way they CAN'T deflate.

You don't have to have anything more than a functioning brain stem to see that.

[LookItUp]

Hey Desmo and TrojanDLA, you're both right.

From allmusic.com:

"Memorably (for some) reinterpreted ten years after the fact as Vanilla Ice's breakout single "Ice Ice Baby," "Under Pressure" found two contemporaries -- David Bowie and Queen -- collaborating for the first and only time on a great one-off single."

[LEO]

I can see that all of all the above was written by very smart people, but let me put my two cents, I'm an uneducated person but when I saw people getting overpriced houses with no income verification, no down payment and no credit I knew exactly what would happen, as far as what is going on now, is just a farce. nobody will be punished, I just hope that we taxpayer will not have to pay for all this mess.

[Bob]

I did....for the last ten to fifteen years I could see it coming....I didn't need an economics degree to see it coming..,it was obvious...Housing prices....continually prodded upward by selfish realtors and mortgage bankers...I mean how much higher could the price of a home go up before the balloon busts....across the board...
You don't have to be a genius either to see that we are headed for a DEPRESSION...not a recession...A DEPRESSION...
Check back with me in a few years...when your in a soup kitchen line wondering how it all happened.

[NoWayinLA]

"No one predicted"? I didn't realize "No One" was such a popular name. I must have spoken to at least a half dozen No Ones in the last couple of years.

[Cal]

Hilarious, reading Mozilo speech he wraps himself in the flag and lets everyone know the Countrywide was leading the charge to get African Americans and Latinos into homes.

Then switching to Housing Wire:
"The Illinois probe follows a Chicago Reporter study released earlier in the week that found that the Chicago area led the country in high-cost home loans, for the second year in a row. The study also said it found marked disparities in loan pricing between white and non-white borrowers, with African American borrowers three times as likely as white borrowers to receive a high-cost home loan.

“The difference in cost between the home loans sold to white borrowers and those sold to African American and Latino borrowers is alarming,” said Madigan, noting that income level did not appear to account for the differences in pricing, according to study results.

According to the Chicago Reporter study, the wealthiest African American homeowners within Chicago were still more likely than the poorest white borrowers to get placed in high-cost loans..”"

Any way you cut it putting people into high cost loans isn't helping achieve home ownership. It is setting them up for a life of indebtedness.

[ckdg]

Pa-lease. A 12 year old could have predicted the housing bust. It was clearly obvious to all, save for those who wanted to perpetuate the fantasy that 25% annual home increases were the norm.

[SJ]

Oh Lord, give the self tanner a rest.

If nobody (including yourself) predicted this coming, why did you sell so much of your own company's stock?

[red]

And your skin is *naturally* that tan, right?

Who is this guy kidding. 41 year old stay at home Mom from Thousand Oaks. Former art director with zero background in finance. Wish he'd called me about 4 years ago...that's at least how long I'd been waiting for this bubble to burst. Are there REALLY people out there who didn't see this coming like a semi, high beams on driving on the wrong side of the freeway??? I saw this coming YEARS ago. All you had to do was follow the new SUV Suburbans, drivers carrying their new Coach handbags to their $600K homes, and headed to Hawaii for the summer on the salalry of a receptionist. If you couldn't figure out something was wrong with this picture, you were either lying to yourself because you were in the same boat and didn't want to face reality, or you were really, really stupid.

[arcticblueice]

There were quite a few people who saw this coming....

Job 12:16 With him is strength and wisdom: the deceived and the deceiver are his.

[arcticblueice]

The delusion of prosperity from matchstick construction duped millions of people into believing they became wealthier thru fabricated home equity. The home equity has started to vanish and this guy wants to claim no one knew?!
Yea right.....

[Chris]

No Housing Bubble and We know Iraq has WMD's, and we know right where they are.........

[Geek Seek]

Thank goodness for DVR. The canned speeches don't even get close to what you get from the Q & A.

First off (and totally off topic): Has anyone noticed how much Waxman looks like the late King Hussein of Jordan?

Darryl Issa (Republican congressman Riverside/San Diego) : "Are there bad guys in front of me? I'm not seeing it." "I'm not trying to defend you. I'd make you the victims if I could blame the meltdown on you." Ok... anyone catch that? He means villains. He says "victims." Little flash of truth there congressman?

More...

Unidentified congressman: "I am very proud to be sitting here with such a distinguished panel of people who run the country -- who run the business of the country -- who..." Catch that one?

Other nuggets: Discussion of the contributions in the millions by Paulson & Co. (hedge fund that made the largest single year gain in the history of wall street) to the Center For Responsible Lending. Coincidentally, CFRL was engaged in exactly the kind of lobbying that resulted in Paulson's huge gains. Oh yeah, and then there's Greenspan (the hatchet-man for the meltdown), getting hired by Paulson as an advisor recently.

There was some questioning as well about Goldman Sachs and the response was a rather dour: "They're not here with us today."

[srla]

Apparently, the UCLA Anderson Forecast, Robert Shiller of Yale, and Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research are all "nobodies", in the estimation of Mr. Mozillo.

Certainly we shouldn't expect the CEO of the largest lender in America to be aware of such "obscure" economists.

What a pathetic commentary on the state of American business. Either we reign in corporate control over Washington and enact mechanisms to make CEOs directly accountable to stockholders, or this country will devolve into a second rate economic power. It's as simple as that.

[Peter]

First we had the dot-com driven stock market bubble, then we had the housing bubble, now we have the commodities bubble. We're running out of places to hide.

Be afraid. I agree, this is our Great Depression, a seventy year event. We won't be out of this mess for many, many years, regardless of what the feds do.

Icarus

[THOMAS]

Are you kidding me. This guy is a joke and it is CRAZY that any News Organizatiion would listen to his CRAP. Leave it to the L A TIMES MORONS

[blackbox]

Okie Dokie Sparky!

[Susan]

Hey, Mozillo probably figured that excuse worked for former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, so he ought to get away with it too.

[Michael Snyder]

joe,
Common Dude! Don't be a Bogart & pass it around! if it's Angelo's stash it should be really good because you're hallucinating your brains out!
The only people who didn't see this coming are fools like "mike" who think they're entitled to a waiver from the laws of physics. Conservation of mass/energy is just the way it is. Matter cannot be destroyed, only converted to energy who's by-product is more mass. For those saddled with a California education let me break it down for you; (take notes mike) There's only so much sh*t. You can shove it around but you can't make more, (unlike Congress) so when all of the sh*t ends up in one pile there's none left for the rest. Trying to add sh*t (mass/money) to the equation only makes for runny sh*t. You can throw it into the air ( sh*t hitting the fan) but no matter how high you fling it, gravity will prevail.
Any questions?

[sfvrealestate]

"Wow. Angelo. What color is the sky in your world? "
Peter, I think the question should be "What color is the SKIN in your world?"

[adoptivefather]

2601 MIDVALE AVE
LOS ANGELES, CA 90064

Anybody have a clue why this house sold for more than $4mil??

[Geek Seek]

adoptivefather: because it has sweeping views of exposition boulevard and hand woven screen doors, imported from Kyrgyzstan? Well if it's not a mistake we should reconvene the oversight committee. Now it's listed on numerous sites at just over $1M, despite showing in some places that it sold for $4M+ in 2006.

[Laker]

adoptivefather,
2601 MIDVALE AVE for $4M is either a mistake in recording or simply a refinance backed by a super corrupt-fraudulent appraisal.
Funny how they are trying to sell it today for $1,050,000 and the "zestimate" at zillow shows it is worth $2,796,000
Talking about price drops or/and accuracy of zillow estimates...
now wait, Where is lefty, he can buy at $1,050,000 and flip it on the spot for $2,8 Million! Great deal in Metro LA

[David Raether]

Actually, I think Angelo Mozilo predicted this mess when he dumped all his Countrywide stock before the collapse occurred.

"Retirement planning."

Yeah, right...

What lying jerk...

[JonB]

Just think how much Mozilo could get paid if he didn't rely on other people to tell him things that are obvious.

[Dr. JwB]

adoptivefather- What's your source for the selling price?

That's my neighborhood and even the listing price of over 1mil is a joke.

[Geek Seek]

re: Midvale

The other possibility is that there is a newly discovered oil pocket under the home and this just reflects the mineral rights. Or maybe the home was a "partial sale" and the $4M reflects a bundle of properties that were all sold at the same time? 4 or 5 houses that were all sold at the same time?

[mbob]

Ohhhh -oh. Alien probe time for pumpkin head.

The FBI has launched an inquiry into CW and its financial statements.

Source: Wall Street Journal 3/8/08

[frank]

why aren't you all talking about the insane high gasoline prices that are happening right now? even MORE of an atrocity than home prices.

[luke]

'No one predicted' current housing bust"

i did 2 years ago even got the timing right, go to this site hundreds of people have suggested it.
Every time they said the end is near, i'll tell you the end is far house prices around the world are going tofall. MBS and the rest of they've been selling would touch it but then again this is to late, more losses of amounts bigger than 20 billion are in the pipe line.

www.housepricecrash.co.uk

[Maggie Knowles]

I saw/heard this on a panel discussion regarding the housing market recently (and I'm sorry I can't find a link to the video) - it went like this:

The mortgage crisis has never been about home ownership. There are 6 major players in this scheme, the home ownership deception scheme.

1. Brokers, 2. Lenders, 3. Investment Bankers, 4. Rating Agencies - and the ones they lure 5. Investors and 6. Borrowers

(you could think of 1-4 as fishermen and 5 and 6 as fish)

1 thru 4 have no skin in the game and they are working for Wall St. and have made off with billions of dollars.

After the high tech boom, the housing market was the next investment vehicle that Wall St. was going to push.

Before 2007, real estate was the best investment in America. How does Wall St. take advantage of that? They package mortgages together and sell them at a higher return. "They can't lose, they're the best investment in the world!" There was a high demand, but there was one problem - there wasn't enough product (borrowers - there were only so many people who had 20% down, high credit ratings, etc.)

Where do you get more product (borrowers)? Start creating products that a wider market can qualify for. So first came the A. sub-prime loans, then came the B. high-rate "strangulation" ARMS (interest rate only goes up, not connected to LIBOR or Prime Rate) where payments will double no matter what happens in the market and principle is never paid down, then came C. a negative amortization product (where principle grows and is never paid off), then came D. Option ARMs, then came E. no doc loans. (I may have missed some data regarding these loan products, but you get the idea.)

The point is, the loan products are defective by definition. When you recognize that these are defective products and this is orchestrated to generate billions of dollars out there for the four players in the middle (1 thru 4 above), then what's the solution?

[judy]

Does anyone remember the old saying "what goes up must come down"?

[e-ticketbooking]

The housing burst is only the icing on the cake, this will eventually affect more than one industry down the road, if not already. You have travel agencies giving away cruises up to 75% because they are not getting the bookings they need to "stay afloat" People loosing their homes or trying to get out from under them means less big ticket items such as furniture, home entertainment systems, less elaborate spending or should I say far less to none. Until finally the ball might swing the other way and head this country way past a recession and right into a depression. Leave it up the the big suiters on WALL ST and a particular DUMB ASS? who thinks a stimulus package will fix things. WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE!!

[Stan]

"Houses do NOT appreciate in the double digits year over year. Period. If they do, it's a bubble. And bubbles deflate. There's no way they CAN'T deflate."

...well actually house prices don't appreciate higher then incomes and rents (if they do it's a bubble). house prices can certainly rise double digits if rents and incomes do as well

[The Economist]

Actually, the Economist magazine had the "Housing Bust" as their COVER STORY a total of 3 times between 2002 and 2006.

Each time, they were dismissed as Chicken Little's by the corrupt media who was on the take from massive real-estate advertising revenues.

Plenty of economists made dire warnings and predictions, as did most of the blogosphere.

The only people who didn't see it coming were the ones who were blind, stupid and listening to "experts" who had a vested interest in perpetuating the lie.

[Toldyaso]

If it smells like a S&L debacle /RIPOFF...just like when Neal Bush was involved with the Silverado failure of $138 Billion.

There must be a Bush involved in the mortgage swindle...oh, THAT'S right a Bush is the President who bragged about this ponzi scheme!

This mafia of a family must be brought to justice!

[MyLessThanPrimeBeef]

I watched Godard's Contempt this weekend and there was a quote in the movie from Bertolt Brecht, in English (I will have to get the oringal German version) that I think might be appropriate here:

Every morning to earn my bread
I go to the market
where lies are sold
and hopefully I get in line with the other sellers.

[peteviles]

MyLessThanPrimeBeef wrote, quoting a movie:

Every morning to earn my bread
I go to the market
where lies are sold
and hopefully I get in line with the other sellers.

Thanks, Prime. I just wanted to point out, the word "hopefully" is almost never used correctly, but in this case it is used properly. It figures it's a translation from a French movie quoting a German playwright.

[MyLessThanPrimeBeef]

Thanks, Peter. I would just poin out that with a very young and buff Brigitte Bardot in the movie, it's more than just French or German; it's, in fact, very universal.

[Red]

Aren't these the same exact words BUSH used just after Hurricane Katrina hit?? "No one EVER expected this". Are they all really so phenomenally out of touch that they believe we can't see how pathetically transparent their LIES are????

[Sylvia]

There is a special place in hell for the likes of Mozilo, Prince, and the other loser wall street bank CEO's who spread this mortgage disease around the globe. This county let the real powers that be the Fed and the Banks to put our country in dire financial straits. America get ready to suffer whether you participated directly or not. Remember when you step into the voting booth in November do you want a president who panders to the wall street elite?

[Mr Pasadena]

If he didn't see it coming, he should send back all the money he earned. Of course he saw it coming. We all know that he is just protecting his fortune.

[Expat]

Peteviles: "hopefully" is an adverb and is seemingly misused most of the time (when is the last time prior to this bit of doggerel that you heard it used that way?). However (also not an entirely correct usage), English has no Academie Francaise equivalent. The success of English owes much to its versatility, flexibility, and adaptability. "Hopefully" has evolved into a "???' (what the heck is it, anyway?). It usage is perhaps not "correct", but it is certainly not wrong.

Totally off topic, but what the heck. I bet Godzillo used "hopefully" in his testimony as in "hopefully, I will not go to jail" and "hopefully, I will not get sued" and "hopefully, I won't develop cancerous lesions on my lustrous skin!"

[Irv]

These guys made millions while the "housing boom" was in its upswing. Even if they saw problems ahead, it would not have been in their best interests to spoil the party. The one quality that big execs and CEOs seem to share is their ability to "paint the picture" and maneuver in any given situation, so that they come out on top. It's rare to find one who is truly in it for the greater good, as opposed to the greater reward.

[Keith]

What's he supposed to say? "Ummm, yeah I totally knew that this downturn would take place guys, but instead of doing anything I thought I would squeeze as much out of it as I can first."

This would presume morals and standards and ethics. When someone on the TV show COPS or Cheaters gets caught redhanded what do they all do? Even if there is a video of them doing it??? That's right just shout it out...good! They LIE!

Since I am a psychologist I suppose I am looking deeply into this but this affords them the ability to still believe in their own minds they are "innocent." The alternative for them is just too frightening, to accept the responsibility that they made a mistake. A mistake that they somehow needed millions to sustain.

There is a lot of guilt floating around here these days.

[Red]

Keith - I agree with you except that I do NOT believe they made a "MISTAKE". They made a CHOICE to RAPE the borowers and the investors, since it didn't take a rocket scientist to see that this would eventually explode and ruin investors all over the globe. He didn't make a MISTAKE, he made a CHOICE to committ a CRIME. I am certain ALL CRIMINALS try to justify their decisions in much the same way.

[jess biddle]

hwo can anyone predict these sorts of things?

if he truly could have "predicted" this, then why woudl he have kept his fortune in the business and kept with it so long. This company is his life and im sure that no one who could have "predicted " it would want to loose their something that they have worked so hard to make.