It seems the smarminess of Countrywide Financial’s CEO, Angelo Mozilo, is now so far reaching as to smear the reputation of Democratic nominee, Barack Obama. According to the Wall Street Journal, many politicos got special treatment with loan approvals done by Mozilo himself. This group came to be known inside the company as “Friends of Mozilo”.

Reuters reports the sovereign wealth fund of Kuwait, the KIA, will not be buying any more GSE debt. Exactly what Bernanke and Paulson were attempting to avoid last week, when they rushed to reassure the world the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debacle would not hurt investors, just happened.

Great…just great.

I’ve reported for about 18 months now the two GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are both severely over leveraged. Now I have a former Federal Reserve bank president agreeing with me calling both companies “insolvent”.

William Poole, said in a Bloomberg report,

Mortgage approvals are getting harder and harder to come by…even for the previous “good” borrower.

Lenders and the automated approval systems they use to approve borrowers underwent a major overhaul this month. On first blush one might think this was a knee-jerk reaction to the credit crunch, but there is more on deeper inspection. I also suspect that this is only the first salvo in an increasing tightening of mortgage lender standards across the board.

When President Bush signed the Economic Stimulus Act into law making jumbo mortgages GSE insurable, he may have unwittingly pushed our GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, already on tilt, over the edge. If you think we have a housing crisis now, wait until you see what the demise of the GSEs and subsequent secondary mortgage market would do!