Friday, February 05, 2010

Bank of America Rips Us for $20 Billion



NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo files a $20 billion fraud charge against Bank of America and two Former CEOs

"According to the lawsuit, Bank of America’s management intentionally failed to disclose massive losses at Merrill so that shareholders would vote to approve the merger. Once the deal was approved, Bank of America’s management manipulated the federal government into saving the deal with billions in taxpayer funds by falsely claiming that they would back out of the deal without bailout funds. . . . Lewis then misled federal regulators by telling them that the bank could not complete the merger without an extraordinary taxpayer bailout due to accelerated losses from Merrill. However, between the time that the shareholders had approved the deal and the time that Lewis sought a taxpayer bailout, Merrill’s actual losses had only increased by another $1.4 billion. . . . As a result of their efforts, Bank of America received more than $20 billion in taxpayer aid.


In other news, today's lead story on page A6 of The Wall Street Journal is GOP Chases Wall Street Donors.
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