Countrywide Slashing Jobs

From the street.com:

Countrywide (CFC), the lender laid low by the troubles in the mortgage market, is prepared to slash up to 20% of its work force.

The California-based mortgage banker said Friday afternoon that it could shed 10,000 to 12,000 workers in the next three months. The eliminations will occur "in areas most impacted by lower mortgage market origination volumes," the company said.

Countrywide, for those of you who do not know is the nation's largest home lender.

There's another lender, not a bank, but a speciality lender who does business with the richest of Americans, whose default rate is about .1% (slight exaggeration) who may very well go out of business: Thornburg Mortgage (TMA). This analysis comes from Jim Cramer, NCBC host of Mad Money.

He's got this theory that the Fed is seeking to crush any mortgage provider who is not a deposit-holding bank. On Kudlow and Co., Larry Kudlow is claiming that he banks are hoarding cash so as to crush the investment bank who have been honing in on their business for years. Hence, the Fed's discount window rate cut has done nothing to settle things down.

This is an interesting thread that I'll be following. The Fed Chairman seems intent on creating a Depression at this point.