“Kurland is seeking to capitalize on a situation that was a product of his own creation. It is tragic and ironic. But then again, greed is a growth industry.”

- Blair A. Nicholas, a lawyer representing retired Arkansas teachers who are also suing Mr. Kurland and other former Countrywide executives.

Talk about disaster capitalists! These creeps are like cockroaches. No matter what goes down, they just come back stronger:

CALABASAS, Calif. — Fairly or not, Countrywide Financial and its top executives would be on most lists of those who share blame for the nation’s economic crisis. After all, the banking behemoth made risky loans to tens of thousands of Americans, helping set off a chain of events that has the economy staggering.

So it may come as a surprise that a dozen former top Countrywide executives now stand to make millions from the home mortgage mess.

Stanford L. Kurland, Countrywide’s former president, and his team have been buying up delinquent home mortgages that the government took over from other failed banks, sometimes for pennies on the dollar. They get a piece of what they can collect.

“It has been very successful — very strong,” John Lawrence, the company’s head of loan servicing, told Mr. Kurland one recent morning in a glass-walled boardroom here at PennyMac’s spacious headquarters, opened last year in the same Los Angeles suburb where Countrywide once flourished.

“In fact, it’s off-the-charts good,” he told Mr. Kurland, who was leaning back comfortably in his leather boardroom chair, even as the financial markets in New York were plunging.

As hundreds of billions of dollars flow from Washington to jump-start the nation’s staggering banks, automakers and other industries, a new economy is emerging of businesses that hope to make money from the various government programs that make up the largest economic rescue in history.

They include big investors who are buying up failed banks taken over by the federal government and lobbyists. And there is PennyMac, led by Mr. Kurland, 56, once the soft-spoken No. 2 to Angelo R. Mozilo, the perpetually tanned former chief executive of Countrywide and its public face.

[...] It is quite evident that their efforts are, in fact, helping many distressed homeowners.

“Literally, their assistance saved my family’s home,” said Robert Robinson, of Felton, Pa., whose interest rate was cut by more than half, making his mortgage affordable again.

But to some, it is disturbing to see former Countrywide executives in the industry again. “It is sort of like the arsonist who sets fire to the house and then buys up the charred remains and resells it,” said Margot Saunders, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center, which for years has sought to place limits on what it calls abusive lending practices by Countrywide and other companies.

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Hallelujah. This plan not only offers help for families in foreclosure, but also for owner-occupants of underwater mortgages. True, it doesn't address the root cause of inflated housing values (and that must be addressed at some point), but it's a smart, comprehensive plan of attack - and as a whole, a very good beginning. Color me impressed:

MESA, Ariz. — President Obama pledged on Wednesday to help as many as 9 million American homeowners refinance their mortgages or avert foreclosure, an initiative he said would shore up distressed housing prices, stabilize neighborhoods and slow a downward spiral that he said was “unraveling homeownership, the middle class, and the American Dream itself.”

The plan, more ambitious than many housing analysts had expected, was unveiled by Mr. Obama in a high school gymnasium here, in a community that is among the nation’s hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis.

“This plan will not save every home, but it will give millions of families resigned to financial ruin a chance to rebuild,” the president told the crowd. “It will prevent the worst consequences of this crisis from wreaking even greater havoc on the economy. And by bringing down the foreclosure rate, it will help to shore up housing prices for everyone.”

The plan has three basic components. One would help homeowners who continue to make loan payments on time, but are paying high interest rates and would otherwise not be able to refinance because they do not have enough equity or their houses are worth less than they borrowed. A second would assist people who are at risk of foreclosure by providing incentives to lenders to alter the terms of loans to make them substantially more affordable to struggling homeowners. The third would try to assure there is plenty of credit available for mortgages by giving $200 billion of additional financial backing to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-controlled mortgage finance companies.

The announcement came a day after Mr. Obama signed his $787 billion economic recovery package, and administration officials like Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, made the case that they will work in tandem. In announcing the housing plan, Mr. Obama struck a populist note, criticizing speculators and “lenders who knowingly took advantage of homebuyers” with the same vehemence he used in going after Wall Street bankers for giving themselves bonuses as their companies were seeking government help.

“It will not help speculators who took risky bets on a rising market and bought homes not to live in but to sell,” he said, adding, “And it will not reward folks who bought homes they knew from the beginning they would never be able to afford.”

The plan will take effect March 4, when the administration publishes detailed rules explaining it. Most of the plan can be enacted by Mr. Obama though his executive powers, although part of it — including changing the bankruptcy laws to allow homeowners to seek changes to their mortgages through bankruptcy proceedings — will require legislation. Mr. Geithner said the administration is already in discussions with lawmakers on how to proceed.

In allowing homeowners who are not delinquent to qualify, the plan marks a sharp break from the housing policies of Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush. Mr. Geithner and the new Housing secretary, Shaun Donovan, said the administration’s research had determined that, with 10 percent of American homeowners either in foreclosure or in danger of it, it was better to intervene early.