Countrywide’s Largesse

Daniel Golden’s “Angelo’s Many ‘Friends’” [August] did not disappoint. My guess is that some of the borrowers in C.E.O. Angelo Mozilo’s V.I.P. program were set up, and others took advantage of their positions to secure favorable terms on mortgages.

No government official should be so naive as to believe that a V.I.P. program simply implies better service. Those people were being bought and paid for. Any offer to enroll a government official should have triggered a look into how Countrywide did business. At a bare minimum, those V.I.P.’s had conflicts of interest they should have disclosed. The deals William Esrey, James Johnson, and Franklin Raines received are all examples of corporate favoritism. They were not dragged kicking and screaming but went all too willingly into Mozilo’s hall of shame.

Laurence C. Day, St. Louis, Missouri

I dislike Angelo Mozilo as much as anyone, find him smarmy, and think that his tan and cuff links make ­Donald Trump look normal. That said, I was bemused that you took Mozilo to task for waiving “half a point” on a “million-dollar loan” or giving James Johnson a $13,000 break—1.375 points “off a nearly $1 million loan to refinance his Washington home.”

I once got closing-cost points waived (2.5 at the time, in the ’90s) on a $400,000 apartment refinance in Manhattan and received 100,000 frequent-flier miles in the deal. All I did was threaten to take my business elsewhere. I didn’t have to be anyone’s friend or lobbyist.

Well, you certainly did “name more names,” but the amounts of money that they saved as “Friends of Angelo” are hardly numbers that I would point to as proof of Mozilo’s malfeasance.

Gary Tobin, San Rafael, California

A lower rate seems innocuous, and it’s easy to miss the value of a half-point drop. But lowering a rate an eighth of a percent on a $1.5 million mortgage over a typical 30-year term is worth more than $40,000. A rate 1 percent lower with no points could be worth 10 times that. I suspect many of the breaks discussed in Golden’s article will amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars over the life of the mortgages.

Victor Christianson, Bay Shore, New York

Health Care for How Many?
The editors support “a mandate ­requiring all Americans to have health insurance” [“Hillary Was Right,” August], which would eliminate the symptom but not the cause of unaffordable health plans. Don’t you see the contradiction (and the humor) ­inherent in your words “regulating new competitively priced plans”?

The excessive political influence ­exerted by the pharmaceutical, medical, and insurance industries is the primary source of the health-care crisis. Forcing everyone to have health insurance ­without first curbing the power of these industries’ lobbyists would increase, not decrease, health-insurance premiums.

Richard Fobes, Portland, Oregon

To me, “Hillary Was Right” smacks of socialism on steroids. In light of Western Europe’s socialized-health-care disaster and its politicians’ pleas to privatize their systems, do you suggest bringing such an absurd idea to America? In the face of Freddie Mac’s and Fannie Mae’s costing U.S. taxpayers
billions, you say this is the right thing?

Tim McClure, Melbourne, Florida

Olympic TallyI’m in the ninth grade, and I did some elementary math regarding Jessica Liebman’s August article “Medal Exchange.” I found that if the U.S. had won all of the 958 medals awarded in Beijing, our “podium index” would be only 8.2, putting us just ahead of Greece. Our G.D.P. of $11.7 trillion is so large that to top Ethiopia’s index of 87.5, we would need to win 10,249 medals—or every medal for about 11 Olympics in a row.

Curtis Warner, Angelica, New York

The New Face of the Post
Thanks for Lloyd Grove’s “The Last Media Tycoon” [August], which cleared up some of the mystery associated with Katharine Weymouth and her grandmother Katharine Graham. Weymouth’s anecdote about Graham’s spirit riding the Washington Post’s elevators reminded me of a story I once heard: Graham was in an elevator with someone delivering vegetables. “My, what a lovely zucchini,” she said. This humanized her for me. Grove’s article put her granddaughter in a similarly sympathetic light.

C.D. Monroe, Washington, D.C.

Facebook’s New Reach
While Simon Dumenco’s “Facebook Creeps Me Out” [August] was fairly accurate, it was completely one-sided. Facebook users control every aspect of their profiles, from what personal information they include to who can view them. Each member has complete control of who sees what. The article neglected to let your readers know that.

Melissa Anderton, Las Vegas, Nevada

Megachurches and Money

I was disappointed by Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “God Wants Me to Be Rich” [August], in which Joel Osteen’s looks are actually compared to ­Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

I think Osteen is fantastic and ­refreshing! You’d be surprised at the variety of people who like and respect him, from shoe shiners to C.E.O.’s.

Kelly Kaneko, Beverly Hills, California