Nothing like a good, old-fashioned bank run.

Anxious customers jammed the phone lines and Web site of Countrywide Bank and crowded its branch offices to pull out their savings because of concerns about the financial problems of the mortgage lender that owns the bank.

Countrywide Financial Corp., the biggest home-loan company in the United States, sought Thursday to assure depositors and the financial industry that both it and its bank were fiscally stable. And federal regulators said they weren’t alarmed by the volume of withdrawals from the bank.

Countrywide is toast. Someone pass the bacon, please. Remember, Countrywide’s bank is a Top-20 US Bank as measured by the amount of its assets. Its assets, by the way, have quadrupled in the last four years, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s ‘have-pulse-will-loan’ credit bubble and the ensuing housing bubble.

If you are really looking for a blood-on-the-scene train wreck, browse the Countrywide 2006 Annual Report - Consolidated Statement of Earnings. Its Balance Sheet will make the “confidence” hucksters proud. Then look at the top of page 179 (Gains on sale of loans and securities), and tell me that business model can survive without Federal Reserve intervention and the government’s/ Wall Street’s (do I repeat myself?) management of markets. So now Countrywide borrowed another $12 billion in a last, desperate attempt to meet its cash flow needs.