Countrywide Financial

Countrywide was America's largest mortgage lender and the poster child for subprime excess before its 2008 distressed sale to Bank of America. The company had pioneered many of the worst practices of the mortgage crisis: stated-income loans, teaser rates, and loan sales to unqualified borrowers. The mechanism failure was growth through deteriorating credit standards—each loan relaxation enabled more loans, creating feedback loop that ended in mass defaults.