The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Year

Countrywide's Humanity

To err is human. So let's be kind and just say that Angelo Mozilo, the embattled, investigated, alarmingly orange CEO of Countrywide, is really, really human. He's more human than most, in fact, to judge by the ton of dumb errors this year.

You got that? He was never acting out of corrupt self-interest. And he never, ever tried to pull the wool over the market's eyes. He just had this funny knack of consistently misconstruing what was going to happen in the future. Like I said, to err is human.

And so where do we start when discussing Angelo Mozilo's brazen humanity? Hmmm ... so much flesh and blood to choose from, so little time. Let's begin in the lead-up to this year, when Mozilo was accidentally selling stock at an increasingly frenetic pace.

How do we know it was an accident? Well, it was either that or the darnedest coincidence. That's because Countrywide, as a company, was busily buying back stock. Fortunately, Mozilo explained away the apparent goof (a silly little mishap really) by this year blaming financial wonks who work in his firm -- the one he created -- but who get such a wide, comfortable berth that they can be gobbling up stock ravenously as he is unloading it with a shovel.

Give the help too much freedom, and look what you get.

But selling all that stock -- more and more, faster and faster -- was probably in itself another mistake made by Mozilo. That is because over the summer, when all those loans had started to turn rancid, Mozilo said: "Nobody saw this coming." See? Unloading all that stock was just a dummkopf mistake. He did not see this coming. Oh, the humanity.

But there were more innocent mistakes to come. After having not seen even a bit of bad stuff coming, Mozilo accidentally started talking about how the nation was entering another Great Depression. Some thought he was trolling for an interest rate cut or federal bailout, but if you are hip to the pattern, you'll just see that he was confused.

Luckily, Countrywide cleared up the confusion in a matter of weeks. By late November, the company, toiling away as this Mozilo declared that the Great Depression had descended, said it was going to make a significant profit in the fourth quarter of this year and more money in 2008.

See? That Great Depression talk was just a dumb mistake ... like the stock selling ... false assurances ... and claims that no one saw it coming ... even the guy unloading stock like there's no tomorrow when his lackeys mistakenly buy. There are not, financially speaking, many of those buyers stepping in to pick up current Countrywide shareholders and loan holders.

Dumb-o-Meter Score: 95. The business media, which quite often hung on Mozilo's word and reported it without raised eyebrow, can come forth to share this award.