No $105 Kobe Beef for YOU!

Sorry Countrywide correspondent sellers.  No posh ski trip to Avon, Colorado this year.  Countrywide canceled the excursion, replete with Kobe beef, caviar and a trip to Spago due to the recent mortgage crunch.  Not that cash is so tight - just the negative PR around the event seemed to be a bit too much.

So why does Freddie Mac get a pass on the Ritz-Carlton holiday party but Countrywide gets lambasted?  I guess the sensitivity has been cranked up a notch in the press.

From the New York Times on the canceled Countrywide ski trip:

Countrywide Financial, the besieged mortgage lender, has canceled a gathering of bankers from smaller mortgage banks at the Ritz-Carlton Bachelor Gulch ski resort (where room rates begin at $725), Countrywide said in a statement on Sunday.

The company was to pay for 30 invited guests’ hotel rooms, meals, skiing and tips.

In the statement, the company said that “in light of recent events” it had decided to cancel all gatherings with business partners and clients for the rest of the year, moving quickly after being criticized for planning such an extravagant event.

The three-night gathering, which was to include business meetings as well as skiing, drinking and sampling expensive meals like $140 caviar and Kurobuta pork osso bucco at the Spago restaurant, had already drawn negative press. “Let ’Em Eat Kobe Steak,” a headline in The New York Post sneered on Saturday.

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