More doubts on Countrywide

The Calabasas-based mortgage lender was downgraded to "underperform” by KBW Inc., which said in a note that a liquidity crisis has spread to the company's bank. But the evidence seems flimsy, at least based on a Bloomberg story. KBW analyst Frederick Canon sent a team member to a Countrywide branch to monitor customers who were looking to withdraw money (the team member saw a grand total of nine people waiting to see two bank employees – wowser!). "We would characterize the situation as one of concern, not panic,” Cannon wrote in the report. "Nonetheless, depositor concern is real, in our view, and likely to create some outflow of customer deposits, especially those greater than $100,000” (the limit on insurance from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.). No response from Countrywide, which seems determined to provide as little information as possible. Oh, it did take out a full page ad in several papers today saying that everything is going to be all right. By the way, there's been a lot of blog chatter in the last few days brushing aside any talk of a bankruptcy filing. All told, it's a very tough story to pin down. At last check, the stock is down more than 7 percent.