Ken Lewis from Bank of Amercia... charged today
It's a wonder this ever happened and now that it has, some sliver of justice may come for all the tax payers in this country. And this is just the beginning. Look for more heads to roll very soon.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Thursday it was bringing civil charges against senior Bank of America executives, including former company CEO Ken Lewis, for their role in the company's controversial purchase of Merrill Lynch.
Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission said it had struck a $150 million settlement agreement with BofA over its decision to pay billions of dollars in bonuses to former Merrill employees.
Bank of America's last-minute decision to purchase the ailing Merrill in September 2008 has remained a central issue in the wake of the financial crisis, prompting both federal and state probes into the matter.
Cuomo's office, which has been aggressively pursuing an investigation into the merger and subsequent bonuses paid to former Merrill employees, said it was charging Lewis and Bank of America's former chief financial officer Joe Price with fraud.
The lawsuit contends that the bank's management team understated the losses at Merrill in order to get shareholders to approve the deal, then subsequently overstated the firm's willingness to terminate the merger to regulators weeks later in order to get $20 billion of additional aid from the federal government.
"Bank of America and its officials defrauded the government and the taxpayers at a very difficult and sensitive time," Cuomo said at a press conference Thursday, joined by federal bailout cop Neil Barofsky, whose office aided in the investigation. "I believe that Bank of America officials exploited this fear."
posted by Jim Pillsbury @ 4:12 PM
15 Comments
15 Comments:
How are you always able to get this information up here before I even hear about it on the news? You seem to always be just a little bit ahead of the curve on getting information out to the public. Maybe you should become an investigative reporter. However you are doing it thank you for the up to date information.
About time someone started going after these bank execs. They stole from us and got away with it up till now. I hope they all go to jail for a long time.
Take this posting and the last one about people being hungry and it paints a pretty ugly picture of Americans and what they think is important. We bail out a bank guy who gets a bonus that is more than twice the amount most of us making in a year, but we let our kids and elderly go hungry.
It is tough to even get your head around the value of the money these guys scammed from us and then actually gave themselves as bonuses. These numbers don't even exist the realm of my pay scale. How can they not have realized how it would turn the public against them?
Nice to see this is happening, but why did it take so long? If they had the goods on this guy a year ago when all this went down, why didn’t they stop it from happening, or at least bring charges a year ago? Why now?
Just found your blog from a link in the Globe online. Really good stuff you write here. Will be coming back. THis stuff about the banks is good stuff. We need to know about what the hell is going on with all our money. You need to keep telling us this stuff. We need to stop these guys from spending all our money.
Do you really think this is the tip of the iceberg and more heads will roll? Seems that this guy got in trouble because the state went after him. Why aren’t the feds going after these guys?
The taxpayers in this country are being used as a money tree for big business and the politicians in this country. They just keep taking from us. How do we stop this?
From what i can gather, like dominos, push over the first one and the others have to fall.
We know, the Feds knew something was a miss more than a year ago, under Bush even. But the lynch pin was AIG, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and others who conned Paulsen, Bernakie and others into bailing out the big boys. They knew they had to cover their tracks somehow, but the root cause is what Cuamo and others are seeking, and when the feds want to... they can demand answers to questions that went unanswered before. Civil Proceedings are not the same as criminal. The thieves can't lie about the historic events that happened before our eyes. No bunker, no hole for them to hide in now. Protesters have hounded some of these criminals at home. It's a wonder we haven't read about some poor working class stiff, who lost everything, going postal at one of the banks.
There are so many big players in this whole mess that will be thrown under the bus, as soon as one or two of the others drop the dime on them. Look for Citi Bank, and possibly Merrill Lynch for sure to be next.
If you need more evidence that things are happening, State Street Bank is paying back 313 MILLION dollars today to bond investors that were mislead, from 2007, in the sub prime speculation disaster.
Most Americans will feel a tad bit better, and the White House knows it, if the people who scammed this country, (and ruined the hopes and dreams of millions of everyday normal people), were held to account for their actions.
Remember how we felt when Bernny Madoff went to jail... we will fell that again, but it will take lots of time and millions of dollars to get to the truth.
The million dollars to get to the truth stuff is what annoys the crap out of me. They screwed us, and now we have to pay to prosecute them for doing it. Somehow that does not seem fair. But better to spend the money to prosecute them than it is to let them get away with it I guess, although I still don't like it.
I just found this blog, very interesting stuff and very interesting perspectives. Think I will be coming back here often. Whoever is writing this covers a wide range of topics both national and local to my area. Useful, helpful, and actionable information always appreciated.
Nice. And long overdue. Lets see if he really goes to jail.
What exactly did State Street get caught doing? That is a lot of money to pay in fines. Fill in the details here Pillsbury.
Exactly... Soldier... the lawyers are making millions and millions of dollars... it's a revolving income source for the very same people who approved bad deals to begin with. And now, it's up to our tax dollars to pay for more lawyers to prosecute.
Help.. the Globe writes that State Street mis-led pensions funds, towns and other large clients across the country about risky investments.
The crime was that State Street told some people about the bad investments,and not others.. and those people sold, before the bottom dropped out. Leaving some to be stuck with huge losses, even their own retirement fund at State Street lost money on the sub prime scheme.
I think you'll see about 20 more like this. It's no secret... even a cave man can see it, many of the institutions that got TARP relief, sold a bill of goods to unsuspecting speculators, who in turn lost everything, while others profited from it.
It's all about greed.
Interested Reader.... I hope your kidding when you ask who writes this blog.
Pretty funny about knowing who you are. I guess if you are from metro west, you know Jim, but not everyone else does. Anyway, bail out money. What exactly were we bailing them out of, a financial mess, which does not seem likely given the bonuses they are getting, or did we bail them out of jail by allowing them to get away with all this bull? I know it looks like maybe they are starting to go after these guys, but lets see if this is real or just a smoke and mirrors game before we get excited about this. I hope you are right Jim, that this is the first of many charges in this scheme by the banks and insurers and car companies and all the others we bailed out.
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