by Tanta on 5/21/2007 05:00:00 PM

He just keeps talking . . .

Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo said depreciating home values are the main culprit.

"The cause of the problem that we have today is decreasing values. That's the cause of the problem, because we didn't have delinquencies and foreclosures when values were going up," he said at a Mortgage Bankers Association conference in Manhattan.

"First-time home buyers were begging us to make them loans because they thought home values were going up significantly, and so they put a lot of pressure on us to make them loans," he said.