Stanford Kurland: the architect of subprime returns

The former president of Countrywide - America's largest mortgage lender until its crash last year - is back. And now he's making a profit out of the mess he helped to create.

Until last week, no one outside finance had heard of Stanford L. Kurland. Yet now he's public enemy number one in the US press and blogging world. "You could say he's brilliant," says Charles Laurence on The First Post: few have shown such agility in exploiting first boom, then bust. But to others, he's a "subprime creep". As one consumer group told the New York Times, he's "like the arsonist who sets fire to the house and then buys up the charred remains and resells it".

As president of Countrywide America's largest mortgage lender until its crash last year Kurland helped devise and mass-market the dodgy mortgages that helped get us into this mess, says The Independent. He escaped in time to cash in a personal $200m worth of shares. Now he's back. His firm, PennyMac, is buying back those same toxic mortgages from the US government and ailing banks for pennies in the dollar and Kurland is making millions all over again.

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