(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
File this under change we can believe in.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — 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…
…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.
Anyone know why they are not bringing criminal charges? ‘Cause I’d like to see some people go to jail. Is it that bringing criminal charges against rich people is gauche? Or something else? Oh, wells. The important thing is that it’s a friggn’ indictment of high-level wrong-doing.
Anyway, TARP watchdog Neil Barofsky helped with the investigation, and he may be opening up a few more cans of Whoop Ass.
Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky began 25 criminal and civil probes in the quarter, and had 77 total active cases, according to a quarterly report to Congress published yesterday. Through the third quarter of 2009, Barofsky’s Washington-based office opened 61 cases with 54 active, he said at the time.
Examiners are looking into possible wrongdoing linked to the financial-industry bailout, including insider trading, accounting violations, mortgage fraud, obstruction of justice and money laundering, according to the report. Barofsky didn’t identify the targets of pending investigations, though details of some cases have emerged separately.
Barofsky confirmed last week he is probing whether the Federal Reserve Bank of New York improperly limited release of information about payments to American International Group Inc.’s counterparties when the insurer was rescued.
25 criminal and civil probes. Bigger, failer, AND handcuffeder? If he’s snoop-dogging AIG, that can’t be good news for Geithner, Paulson, and Bernanke, all of whom claim (impossibly) to know nothing about it.
Check out Mish Shedlock’s previous analyses of our dubious financial uber-lords listed half-way down in this post.
I’ll add that I’m willing to keep an open mind, but the bail-outs look damned under-handed. We deserve to know what happened with our money.
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as an excuse. State’s secrets, etc. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit.
Global parasites everywhere agree.
It is not enough to destroy America. They have to make it obvious enough to create a demand to ask for global government. In their minds the thought that our American government no longer works must be prevalent in the minds of all Americans. Problem is the Americans don’t even lift their heads up, buried in celebrity and Superbowl crap.