Bank Of America Withheld Loss Figures Ahead Of Merrill Vote

nytimes.com:

Days before Bank of America shareholders approved the bank’s $50 billion purchase of Merrill Lynch in December 2008, top bank executives were advised that losses at the investment firm would most likely hammer the combined companies’ earnings in the years to come. But shareholders were not told about the looming losses, which would prompt a second taxpayer bailout of $20 billion, leaving them instead to rely on rosier projections from the bank that the deal would make money relatively soon after it was completed.

Read the whole story: nytimes.com

Comments

[dmm1047]

05:20 PM on 06/04/2012

And this is just fine with the Republicans. They think thievery is just peachy.

[bigdomino]

04:42 PM on 06/04/2012

I say we need to put the crooks in jail. Need a couple of them having to walk in front of the cameras as they go into the police station. Would be a good site!

[RacerX]

03:36 PM on 06/04/2012

Amazingly we can bail out our banks and let the criminals that ripped us off roam free but heaven forbid we should bail out our States of the Union...

The SEC is weak: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog

[edinban]

03:27 PM on 06/04/2012

Universal justice would be well served if at least one of these bankers was actually brought up on criminal charges and the crimes had a name and face.

[JohnTheAndroid]

03:18 PM on 06/04/2012

BOA SHOULD BE ON DEATH ROW

[boyer37212]

03:09 PM on 06/04/2012

You hear about secretaries who embezzle $30,000 to $100,000 from their company or boss and get more years in prison than any of these bankers and Wall Street guys who essentially stole hundreds of millions. Sick.

[don52]

03:05 PM on 06/04/2012

Lets talk about it for another 5 years. Certainly we cannot consider a crime was commtted

[Catherine Lynch Monks]

02:52 PM on 06/04/2012

The odds for them being brought to trial for this are slim and none. I'm sure a committee will be appointed to look closely at this, and then draw it out past the statute of limitations. Business as usual.

[Donut Man]

02:47 PM on 06/04/2012

Wow, all these con posters were right. It's socialism and Marxism that continually threatens to ruin the world economy again by being to big too fail, too big to be prosecuted and too big to tell the truth to shareholders.

[Matthew Val Hall]

02:46 PM on 06/04/2012

Shame on you if you work for Big Financial. If you do, you are a criminal accessory. Your work helps a tiny few and hurts a great many. Shame.

[shiny73]

03:12 PM on 06/04/2012

Maybe you are right. But maybe those people have looked for other jobs and can't find any (like my brother who left one of those banks two years ago and just last month got a job at Wal-Mart).

[NRay]

02:46 PM on 06/04/2012

We don't yet know why this deal was done. What we do know is that the system-shaking losses coming from the imminent failure of a largely federally uninsured institution (Merrill) were transferred to B of A, where essentially all deposits are federally insured. So, rather than have Merrill go down, and so soon after Leyman repeat the earthquake of its failure, the losses were passed on to an institution, B of A, insured by the taxpayers. In a nutshell, that's probably where all of this will prove to go.

[Captai]

02:52 PM on 06/04/2012

Despite your attempt to justify these crimes they remain crimes.

[NRay]

04:04 PM on 06/04/2012

My comment was not to justify anything, and was only an attempt to explain why it was done.  The big "wrong" underlying all of these financial shenanigans was allowing these institutions to become so large to begin with they their failures would be catastrophic for us all.

[nadohawk]

02:29 PM on 06/04/2012

The headline on the front page really speaks of the class and maturity of the editors of this site.

[ElAnthony]

05:09 PM on 06/04/2012

And the crime itself speaks to the humanity of the criminals.

[mtgt350]

02:27 PM on 06/04/2012

Wells Fargo received $21.6 Billion in tax breaks in the last 10 years, more than any other company in US History.

[MacTheCat]

02:26 PM on 06/04/2012

The too big to fail banks are bigger now than before this manufactured financial crisis, and not one banking executive has been prosecuted.

Who owns America, folks?

[Captai]

02:27 PM on 06/04/2012

The banksters. Lock, stock and barrel.

[ajbiggs]

02:26 PM on 06/04/2012

This stinks as much as the IPO for facebook.....once again the little guy, shareholders, are left to suck up the losses.

More regulation please!!