This is how moral crises spread–from the top down. When regulators intervene into the private sector and demand that criminally misleading action be taken on the part of Bank CEO’s, it becomes clear that the trickle-down / trickle across effect of fraud and corruption has already been spread like a plague.

 bandpThey failed to do their job as regulators. They ignored the FBI warnings of an impending credit fraud crisis (because they enabled it) and they personally benefitted from the fraud and collusion.

This testimony may not fully vindicate Ken Lewis at B of A. Frankly, they ALL need to go.

But Paulson definately needs to be indited, as does his Goldman-Sachs-engineered clone, Geithner, along with so called “regulator’s” Bernanke and Summers, and their Wall Street confederates:

In a report from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on testimony taken from Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis in February, Lewis testified that Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke instructed him not to disclose Merrill Lynch’s financial condition to shareholders before its takeover by Bank of America. Under the law, banks must alert their shareholders of any materially significant financial losses. Disclosing losses at Merrill, which eventually totaled $15.84 billion for the fourth quarter, could have given Bank of America’s shareholders an opportunity to stop the deal and let Merrill be subjected to financial bankruptcy reorganization.

Lewis testified over four hours in Cuomo’s New York offices on Feb. 26. The WSJ provided a transcript of the following exchange:

Cuomo: Were you instructed not to tell your shareholders what the transaction was going to be?

Lewis: I was instructed that ‘We do not want a public disclosure.’

Cuomo: Who said that to you?

Lewis: Paulson …

Cuomo: Had it been up to you would you (have) made the disclosure?

Lewis: It wasn’t up to me.

Cuomo: Isn’t that something that any shareholder at Bank of America … would want to know?

Lewis: It wasn’t up to me.

Cuomo: Wasn’t Mr. Paulson, by his instruction, really asking Bank of America shareholders to take a good part of the hit of the Merrill losses?

Lewis: Over the short term, yes.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported on Feb. 5, that Lewis agreed to proceed with the Merrill merger only after Paulson and Bernanke said he and his board would lose their jobs if Bank of America backed out of the deal.

Cuomo’s office says it has been unable to gather a full picture of the Fed’s role in the December discussions because the Fed has invoked a regulatory privilege, allowing it to keep some documents confidential, in an effort to obstruct the investigation.

Each of these reports corroborates parallel reports of criminal misconduct in which the highest levels of government are culpable in the scheme to hide the hopeless insolvency of the banks from shareholders and the public. 

The excuse will always be the same–that the end justifies the means: “We had to contain panic, we had to prevent a run on the banks at any cost”.

But the truth is much deeper. The perpetual “Wall Streeters” who have been placed at the Fed and in the Administration’s regulatory offices colluded with the Finacial Elite to defraud the world with worthless securitized derivatives.

They completely bankrupted the world’s present dollar-denominated monetary system with their 1.14 quadrillion dollar Ponzi scheme.

This is what is being covered up. They helped cause the collapse and the ensuing panic, so of course they want to contain it (which they cannot) and deny it (which they are).

Of much less importance, but certainly of note, is how Jamie Dimon managed to refuse taking on similar losses in J.P. Morgan’s absorption of Bear Stearn’s.

Either way, the 20 billion write-down is placed on the backs of taxpayers. But clearly, when Treasury commands, Bank of America backs down. When J.P. Morgan commands, Treasury backs down.

“To know one’s place in the order of things, is a great blessing.”
Lord Montrose to Robert Roy MacGregor in Rob Roy

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