This is how clueless America's corporate chiefs are

Countrywide Financial outgoing CEO Angelo Mozilio thinks that by stuffing his pockets with only $24 million, he can make the perception of him as a corporate scumbag go away:

Angelo Mozilo, head of Countrywide Financial, has bowed to pressure and will give up his controversial $37.5m (£18.9m) severance package from the ailing US sub-prime mortgage lender.

Mozilo, one of America's most highly paid executives, had been due to collect the pay-off following Countrywide's $4bn takeover by Bank of America.

The takeover has not yet been completed, however, and there have been reports that the continuing turmoil in the US housing market could derail the deal.

"I believe this decision is the right thing to do as Countrywide works toward the successful completion of the merger with Bank of America," Mozilo said in a statement.

He is also giving up the $400,000 a year he was due to be paid as a consultant to the company after his retirement, together with benefits including the use of a private jet.

The Countrywide chairman and chief executive has come under fire from politicians, with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently describing the payoff as "outrageous" and accusing 69-year-old Mozillo of being "one of the principal architects of this whole house of cards".

When the pay-off was first revealed earlier this month, Bank of America chief executive Ken Lewis said the package would enable Mozilo to go away and "have some fun".

He should still be able to do that, however - Mozilo retains a pension and retirement package worth around $24m and still has a sizeable shareholding in the company he co-founded in 1969.

My retirement fund has lost every penny that I've put into it this year, with no end in sight, since overseas markets are tumbling again this morning before the U.S. stock market even opens.

Tonight George W. Bush gives his final (thank God) State of the Union address. Word is that the speech will focus on the economy. My prediction is that he'll talk about the economy being "structurally sound", as he said last week when signing quickie legislation to get cash-for-votes checks in the mail for Americans, passed by Congress and signed by the Idiot-in-Chief. He'll probably talk about "optimism". Chances are he'll have some white guy from a red state who started a business in 2007 and hired two black guys sitting next to Laura Bush, right there in the seat Ahmad Chalabi used to occupy. He'll point to that guy, who created two whole jobs, as emblematic of the success of endless tax cuts for giant corporations like Countrywide. Maybe he'll even bring back that "uniquely American" woman with the disabled son who works three jobs -- assuming she can get the time off.

Tonight, George W. Bush will try to make a shit sandwich out of the steaming pile of rotting trash into which he's turned a once great nation. It's probably the last time Americans will pay attention to anything he says. Of course, listening to what he says has always been a fool's errand. As Jacob Weisberg notes today,

Mr. Bush began his February 2001 address by hailing the new spirit of cooperation he hoped would characterize his relations with Congress. “Together we are changing the tone in the nation’s capital,” he declared. The new president’s top priority would be education. He intended to marry the liberal desire for more federal money to the conservative demand for higher standards.

The rest of the speech was similarly moderate in tone and substance. Mr. Bush planned to use part of the enormous fiscal surplus he inherited for a broad-based tax cut. But he also wanted to expand Medicare benefits, preserve Social Security, extend access to health care and protect the environment. He concluded with an exhortation to bipartisanship — in Spanish. “Juntos podemos,” he said. “Together we can.”

I'm not as charitable towards Bush as Weisberg is, in that I never "kind of liked" that or any George W. Bush. It's hard to "like" a president that you know full well stole the office. But there's no denying that over the course of his presidency, any small spirit of cooperation devolved into the tantrums of a small man with messianic delusions and no conscience whatsoever.

As he surveys the wreckage that is America under his leadership, a better man would use it as a moment of introspection. Perhaps he might try the "I meant well" approach. But George W. Bush is incapable of admitting a mistake of any kind. And in defending his catastrophic record, he's going to prove himself as tone-deaf and clueless as the guy who thinks that taking only $24 million for running a company into the ground and putting thousands of people out of work is somehow an act of redemption.