It's been widely reported that Countrywide Mortgage had a special VIP program that provided various discounts to well-connected elites who could help Countrywide politically, most famously Sen. Christopher Dodd.

Is anyone else reminded of that horrible [IMHO] Sylvester Stallone movie Cop Land, about a town full of corrupt police officers, who were accomplices to all sorts of illegal mayhem? When I saw this movie, my girlfriend and I laughed out loud when it was revealed that the police officers were all bought off with "low interest mortgages" provided by the mob. Maybe the screenwriters had their fingers closer to the pulse of American corruption than I realized!