At the Big Picture, there aresome thoroughly shocking quotes from Countrywide Financial Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo.

I agree with Mr. Ritholtz’s assessment that the shocker quote is, “Company is seeing home price depreciation at levels not seen since the Great Depression“.

FWIW, Mr. Mozilo also said, “no one saw the deterioration of real estate values coming“. I beg to differ.

There were a few people, including me, who were noting that house prices were insane, as early as 2002. (Not on this blog, on a message board)

I’ve also said that the dollar and the balance of payments in the US is unsustainable, and this will create a situation where interest rates going up makes real estate illiquid, and rates going down puts the US dollar through the floor.

We’ll see how it goes.