Apparently, I'm not alone in casting the hairy eyeball on hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of stock dumping by Countrywide Financial
These plans supposedly restrict executives from trading on insider knowledge, but not long ago, an academic study by Alan Jagolinzer suggested that by modifying these plans on the fly, executives are actually able to game their gains, holding up sales until positive news can move the stock up, or speeding up the dumping before things really get ugly.
Doesn't surprise me at all. In the past, I've written about executives whose well-timed, accelerated "diversification" or "estate planning" maneuvers just happened (so they claimed) to run ahead of lousy results, to their pocketbooks' benefit. Looks to me like the "aw shucks," son-of-a-butcher Mozilo has been doing the same thing. His suspiciously vocal, preemptive PR strike ahead of his most recent share-dumping only reinforces that conclusion.
For more on Countrywide and the housing meltdown, see