It’s too early for pheasant shooting in the Washington area, but for those politicians with a sporting disposition, it’s Angelo Mozilo season. The chief executive of Countrywide Financial has been subject to unrelenting attack as the personification of the housing finance crisis.

Now there’s a barrage of leaks, reports, whispers, and so on suggesting that the acquisition of Countrywide by Bank of America will unravel, or that somehow the Countrywide bank can be “saved” while the holding company is flushed away with its bondholders.