Financial 411: Weekly Economic Roundup

Countrywide Execs Agree to SettlementCountrywide Financial co-founder Angelo Mozilo and two other former executives of the defunct mortgage giant have agreed to pay $67.5 million dollars, to avoid going to trial next week for alleged investor fraud and insider trading. A federal judge has accepted a settlement between the three former executives and the Securities and Exchange Commission. As part of the settlement, the defendants neither admitted nor denied liability. Mozilo sold millions of his own shares in Countrywide shortly before the company went belly up at the end of 2007.