Bank of America's CEO is pretending to be an idiot to try to get out of paying up in a major lawsuit, according to Matt Taibbi.
In a blog post published Tuesday, the Rolling Stone writer mocks BofA CEO Brian Moynihan's testimony in a huge mortgage fraud case.
The deposition "will go down as one of the great Nixonian-stonewalling efforts ever," Taibbi writes. "The entire time, the Bank of America CEO presents himself as a Being There-esque cipher who was placed in charge of a Too-Big-To-Fail global banking giant by some kind of historical accident beyond his control, and appears to know little to nothing at all about the business he is running."
Moynihan was questioned in a May deposition, but the transcript was just released this week. In the 229-page document, the BofA CEO says over and over that he doesn't remember anything about Countrywide, which recently was the country's largest lender. Acquired by BofA in 2008 in one of the worst deals of all time, Countrywide is the most famous offender in the mortgage meltdown that sparked the Great Recession.
MBIA, which insured mortgage securities backed by subprime Countrywide loans, sued BofA in 2008, claiming that its Countrywide subsidiary lied about the quality of its mortgages.
This is not the first time that Taibbi has bashed Bank of America. He wrote in a Rolling Stone article in March that BofA bankers are "self-appointed royalty...just as dumb and inbred as the real thing, and every bit as expensive to support."
BofA's Countrywide acquisition cost the banking giant $4 billion in 2008. The disgraced lender has gone on to cost BofA more than $40 billion in losses, settlements and legal expenses.
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