Countrywide

Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation's largest mortgage lender, said Tuesday it will begin calling borrowers to offer refinancing or modifications on $16 billion in loans whose interest rate is set to adjust by the end of 2008.

There's two aspects of the story on which I'd like to comment...

Countrywide said it would refinance about $10 billion in loans and modify another $4 billion. It also plans to contact borrowers of some $2.2 billion who are late on their loans and having trouble paying because of a recent rate reset. In total Countrywide's plan would reach out to about 82,000 borrowers for some kind of relief. [...] The company estimates some 10,000 borrowers with subprime loans who are now behind on their payments due to their mortgage interest rate resetting will be offered rate reductions by the end of the year.

So if you did the right thing and did NOT overextend by taking on more mortgage than you could afford, Countrywide only has one thing to say to you: SUCKER!

So far this year, Countrywide has completed about 20,000 loan modifications -- a figure that represents less than 5% of the more than 500,000 loans the lender reports were behind in payments as of last month and about 24% of the roughly 82,000 loans the company said were in foreclosure as of September.

There's over 80,000 loans in foreclosure and another420,000 behind? That doesn't mean anything good for Countrywide.