The questioner wanted to know what, if anything, worried Mr. Mozilo, according to a participant.
“I wake up every day frightened that something is going to happen to Countrywide,” Mr. Mozilo said.
A year and a half later, that day arrived. In January 2008, Countrywide, the company he had built from a two-man mortgage operation into a lending behemoth, had to sell itself to Bank of America at a bargain price because it was being smothered by losses tied to a mountain of sketchy loans.
Yet almost until the moment Countrywide was taken over, Mr. Mozilo was publicly buoyant about its ability to ride out the mortgage crisis. Privately, however, he occasionally offered a gloomier assessment of Countrywide’s prospects and practices, according to e-mail and interviews.
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