It’s open season on Countrywide (CFC) chief Angelo Mozilo. U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton became the latest political leader to criticize the riches Mozilo has accumulated in recent years while leading his mortgage company to the brink of collapse. Bank of America (BAC) last week agreed to pay $4 billion in stock to buy Countrywide, just days after the company was forced to deny bankruptcy rumors for the second time in less than a year. The deal allows BofA to buy Countrywide near its 52-week low, locking in losses for many shareholders - while handing Mozilo a severance package valued in the tens of millions of dollars. Some observers see Mozilo’s massive paychecks as a troubling case of perverse incentives.

Clinton called Mozilo’s pay package “outrageous” and told CNBC that the deeply tanned executive is “one of the principal architects of this whole house of cards, with these exotic subprime mortgage vehicles,” Reuters reports. Others in Congress have already taken aim at Mozilo: U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman invited him to testify about his pay next month, and U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer and U.S. Rep. Barney Frank have urged him to give some of his massive severance package to families that could lose their homes. Don’t hold your breath. For its part, Countrywide is trying to change the subject, claiming in a recent press release that its recently redoubled loan modification and related efforts “helped more than 80,000 borrowers retain their homes in 2007.” Too bad Mozilo and his minions didn’t care about home retention until it was too late for thousands of others.

Fortune’s Shawn Tully says the $4 billion Bank of America (BAC)-Countrywide (CFC) deal is a smart one, but not everyone agrees. The Service Employees International Union took issue with the deal Friday, urging lawmakers to curb the growth of big banks. The union takes issue with the notion that Countrywide will, as BofA said in its press release Friday, “benefit from the stability of being part of the largest and one of the most financially strong financial institutions in the United States.”

Instead, the union sees the Countrywide deal as increasing the prospect that BofA itself will fail. “Permitting such concentration of risk,” it writes, “would be like putting a sick patient, Bank of America, together in the same room with a highly contagious and terminally-ill patient, Countrywide, and expecting both of them to get better.” If that scenario doesn’t doesn’t strike you as likely, Fortune’s Roddy Boyd offers another: that Countrywide will never again reach its recent profitability levels and faces big writedowns to boot. Regardless, the market seems to like the deal, even given its risks. Maybe investors are just taking BofA chief Ken Lewis at his word. “We are aware,” he said in Friday’s press release, “of the issues within the housing and mortgage industries.” It’s not clear the same was always true of his richly tanned counterpart at Countrywide.

The Countrywide (CFC) disconnect continues. Shares of the mortgage lender sank Friday morning on news that Bank of America (BAC) plans to pay just over $7 a share to take over Countrywide - nearly a dollar below the $7.75 the stock closed at following Thursday’s rip-roaring rally. But as always, deeply tanned chief Angelo Mozilo will do just fine for himself, thank you. Mozilo stands to walk off with a going-away gift of $115 million, including company jet time and country club fees, the Los Angeles Times reports. The number, which is based on a reading of Countrywide’s regulatory filings, reflects the company’s obligation to pay him triple his salary and bonus, plus pensions and stock grants. It’s not like Mozilo needs or even deserves the money: he cashed in more than $100 million worth of stock over the past year even as Countrywide shares lost more than three-quarters of their value. Unsurprisingly, BofA chief Ken Lewis told investors Friday that he doesn’t expect Mozilo to stick around for long: “I would want him to stay until the deal gets done,” Lewis said on a conference call, Reuters reports, “and then probably I would guess that he would then want to go have some fun.” At shareholder expense, of course.