There is plenty of blame to go around in Washington and New York for the financial meltdown and subsequent bailout debacle.   These Wall Street financial terrorists – Wizards of Mass Derivatives (WMD’s) – with the assistance of their Washington lackeys, Paulson, Geithner, Bernanke, et al., robbed the national treasury to pay the piper for their incompetence and then left us standing alone on the dance floor.  And do not even go there about the fact that they “paid the money back” in their defense. 

That dog won’t hunt!

Since our federal prosecutors would not grow some testicles and bring criminal indictments against any of these guys – with President Obama’s U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder leading the “Charge of the Lightweight Brigade” – New York AG Andrew Cuomo has demonstrated that he has big enough balls to make at least a couple of them pay for screwing us.

Ken Lewis, former CEO of Bank of America (BoA), was charged with committing fraud yesterday in a New York state court for his failure to divulge to BoA shareholders the extent of Merrill’s losses, as well as an undisclosed agreement to pay former Lynch executives massive bonuses, and that he intentionally misled the government by threatening to scuttle the deal in order to get another $20 billion in bailouts from the Treasury.                   

Sources from Lewis’ criminal defense team have indicated that they may subpoena Henry Paulson, former Bush Treasury Secretary, as well as Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the FederalReserve, to testify at Lewis’ trial in an attempt to persuade the jury that Lewis did not mislead the government about the severity of BoA’s financial condition subsequent to the banks merger with Merrill Lynch.  They will further argue that the bank made money after the deal, and repaid all of the TARP money it received from the federal government, so the government and shareholders were not harmed – and in fact benefited from his actions (or inactions, as the case may be).

What is so unnerving is the audacity of Lewis to claim that “they made the company lot’s of money” as a defense.  Worse yet, the Wall Street Journal comes to their defense, claming among other things that “TARP was a gilded straitjacket that every bank, including BofA, wanted to flee as quickly as possible”.

Really?  Let’ review this twisted and misleading logic. 

We made some really, really bad bets, and the financial system will collapse if you do not give us unprecedented bailouts to fix the system.  Of course we understand that the government is giving us this money to restore the necessary liquidity - a continuous flow of money to keep the economy running – so that businesses can continue to borrow money, and keep people working.  Now we are not going to making any promises to that effect, but we will do what we think is right for the financial system .  Also, we accept that we have to purchase/merge with some of the other failed financial institutions as a condition of getting our asses saved.  But we will not be obligated to deal honestly, nor follow financial regulations, in these business dealings, and if we see an opportunity to squeeze more money out of this mess, we will.  Moreover, we will probably accept this unreasonable condition that you may limit our pay structure while we are under the obligation to pay the government back, but once we retire that debt to the government, you have to get off our ass and we can transact business however we like. 

How dare them now have the arrogance to say they made money as a result of some uncanny business acumen.  As I have stated previously in this blog – give me $15 or $20 Billion, I can make a Billion or so investing in some very conservative financial instruments over the course of a year, pay you back, give myself an obscene bonus – and then tell you to go FxxK youself!!

 Moreover, REMEMBER THIS:  they did NOT have to accept the money.  Furthermore, they were supposed to lend the money, not hold it in reserve while waiting for the markets to turn North, and then invest it in order to make a quick killing so they could line their fat pockets, all the while leaving many Americans and businesses hung out to swing in the cold, harsh winds of their utter malfeasance.  How utterly disingenuous of both Wall Street and the Wall Street Journal.

This author has previously commented several times about the criminal malfeasance of BoA in this blog – in this entry and in this entry - and questioned the refusal of federal prosecutors to bring charges in this matter.  A Federal District Court Judge was appalled by BoA’s behavior, and was obviously disgusted that the U.S. government – specifically the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – was not doing more.  If we have to wait for a New York Attorney General to act, this begs the question as to how deep in bed people at the top of this government are with Wall Street? 

 President Obama – you took money from Wall Street, and now you say you want them to be accountable?  Prove it!

P.S.  This same picture was used in a previous entry – it is the finest representative illustration of the BoA bailout I have seen on the Internet.  Illustration by graphic artist David Dees of DeesIllustration.com