Some of the lenders blamed for fueling the nation’s mortgage woes are now profiting from the crisis.

History won’t be kind to Angelo Mozilo, the founder of Countrywide Financial whose shareholders approved the company’s sale to Bank of America yesterday. His is a great American success story, but a tragedy, too.

North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad is perhaps the most unusual of the so-called Friends of Angelo, who received favorable mortgage rates and VIP treatment from Countrywide Financial and its boss, Angelo Mozilo.

Some might call it good timing for Anne V. Farrell, who is leaving the Washington Mutual board of directors because she has reached the mandatory retirement age of 72. Washington Mutual, the embattled Seattle lender, is facing lawsuits, more big lending losses, and is the subject of takeover speculation.

Three Wall Street executives were held up by a Congressional Democrats today as poster boys for executive compensation run amok.

Two of the three - E. Stanley O’Neal, chairman and chief executive of Merrill Lynch, and Charles O. Prince III, head of Citigroup - lost their jobs last fall after the collapse of the subprime mortgage market which they had once ridden to huge profits.

Countrywide Financial reported Friday that its mortgage foreclosure rate doubled last month compared to a year ago.

That prompted the Charlotte Business Journal to ask Bank of America if it was going forward with its roughly $4 billion stock deal to acquire Countrywide, the nation’s largest mortgage lender.

Troubled Washington Mutual, the nation’s largest savings and loan, has seen its stock price nearly double from its lows over the past month. Takeover speculation has certainly helped, as have the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cuts.

But don’t discount the importance of the message chairman and CEO Kerry Killinger sent when he decided not to take a 2007 bonus that he had earned. Executives at other companies caught in the real estate mess — Countywide Financial and D.R. Horton, for example — have not set the same example of accountability.