Countrywide is moving all its mortgage origination activities under the umbrella of its federal savings bank, which would allow it to use deposits to fund loans, as well as let it borrow through the Federal Home Loan Bank system.

FORBES: Countrywide Is On Its Side

Already, Wal-Mart has been stopped from getting a federal savings-bank charter, for fear that the giant retailer might do to local banks what it has done to local stores.

ECONOMIST: Banking in Utah: From Mormon to mammon | The

" Postal Savings in Japan and Mortgage Markets in the US", by Thomas Cargill and Hall Scott, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Economic Letter March 2006.

ECONOMIST: Sources and acknowledgements