July 23, 2008 Behind the Countrywide housing bust Play video

(NECN) - The name of Angelo Mozilo will forever be linked to the epidemic of risky housing loans that made fortunes for a few executives and Wall Street speculators, even while thousands of Americans were brought to financial ruin. They overpaid for expensive loans in a housing bubble that was about to burst. Now they face foreclosure.

But there's much more to the story. Mozilo's links to powerful players in congress and elsewhere are being exposed in a series of investigative reports.

The man doing the digging is reporter Daniel Golden of Conde Nast's Portfolio.com