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There are lots of rules for being a decent person. None of them apply to banking, as we’ve seen again and again lately. But you’d think a certain level of smarts would accompany the lack of decency required to run a banking institution, and that level of smarts would include an understanding that when your house is on fire, you don’t piss on the firemen.

For example, if the American people just shelled out $85 billion to save your crooked butt so you don’t drag everybody else down with you, lying low for a while in feigned humility and embarrassment is a better idea than gathering up the boys for a few hundred thousand dollars worth of pedicures and margaritas in a phew-that-was-close party while changing the company initials to stand for “Ain’t Insurance Grand?”

Some hint of remorse and/or gratitude would be good, don’t you think?

Or, if you run one of the biggest predatory lending outfits in the country into the ground and have to rely on Bank of America to bail you out, it’s best not to go on record sneering at your victims’ cries for help. Better advice: If you absolutely must create a document deriding your snookered customers as “disgusting,” be sure you hit the “Forward” button in your email and not “Reply.”

The Consumerist and the LA Times have reported on an email exchange posted by a man named Dan Bailey in a forum at LoanSafe.org, a site dedicated to helping people in mortgage trouble better negotiate with banks. Bailey sent a letter to Countrywide hoping the bank would adjust his adjustable rate mortgage back to where he could afford it, rather than letting it foreclose. He received this reply from Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo, which was obviously intended for someone internally:

This is unbelievable. Most of these letters now have the same wording. Obviously they are being counseled by some other person or by the internet. Disgusting.

Yes, the little people are having to ask the internet for help dealing with crooks. That is disgusting, but in a much different way than Mozilo meant.  

It’s one thing to give sweetheart deals to “Friends of Angelo” while baiting and switching those with more hope than money—people sort of expect a banker to be crooked—but it’s another to sneer at the poor soon-to-be-on-the-street saps as your own fiscal irresponsibility earns you an investigation, public scorn, and likely as not a smaller house than before. Sure, you’ve got friends on Wall Street and in Washington willing to lend a fresh-mint-smelling, not-invisible hand—but we suppose switching those adjustable rate mortgages over to fixed rates is just out of the question, right?

So after being Mr. Potter to every George (Dan) Bailey in the land, you expect George Bailey and the whole town now to come to your rescue, huh? If that’s not disgusting, I don’t know what is.