New Orleans Reports from Bloomberg News and the Los Angeles Times are raising the specter of Bank of America filing for bankruptcy for its Countrywide mortgage unit detonating the “nuclear” option to save the parent company and run from the toxic mortgage load bought in 2008.  I wonder if this doesn’t finally give another explanation to Bank of America’s continued resistance to rational modification of mortgages to allow mortgage holders to stay in their homes.

According to these reports, Bank of America, its lawyers and strategists have spent time and money making sure that they contained the Countrywide operation as a separate entity.  The Bloomberg report notes:

“Countrywide has $11 billion in assets that could be depleted through demands to repurchase defective mortgages,” Jonathan Glionna of Barclays Plc said in an Aug. 31 note. After that, Bank of America may not have any obligation to pay claims from Countrywide’s creditors, he said.

Typically, a corporation that acquires another firm’s assets isn’t liable for the seller’s debts, unless the transaction is considered a de facto merger or there was fraud in the takeover, Robert M. Daines, a Stanford Law School professor, wrote in a legal opinion prepared for BNY Mellon, trustee for the Countrywide mortgage bonds. Daines analyzed whether Bank of America would have to pay bond investors if Countrywide couldn’t.

American International Group Inc. (AIG), the insurer that sued Bank of America last month to recoup more than $10 billion in losses on Countrywide mortgage bonds, argued that the bank is a legal successor to the unit. New York-based AIG cited a series of transactions by Bank of America in 2008 that “were structured in such a way as to leave Countrywide unable to satisfy its massive contingent liabilities.””

Obviously one reason all of the big whoops suing Bank of America from Freddie to Fannie are making sure in any litigation or settlement that BofA is on the hook for Countrywide is their fear that the company will finally jettison this toxic nightmare.  But for poor, working homeowners the problem in getting modifications and preventing foreclosure is that Bank of America clearly has to continue to play pretend and pump up the fake value of Countrywide mortgages that are still on the books at the loan terms rather than the underwater value.

In Phoenix where values have been halved and Arizona Advocates and Actions has been mired in the modification process with Bank of America few if any modification offers make financial sense for homeowners because the bank continues to pretend that houses now worth little more than $100,000 are still holding the $250,000 loan value of the original mortgage.  Restating the mortgage to the actual value would save millions of homeowners.  Unfortunately, injecting reality might bring the whole house of cards down, not just the Countrywide unit, but all of the nation’s largest financial institution, Bank of America.

What a mess!