dataWe followed very carefully last April (and quoted) the Cuomo testimony, as well as the live testimony in which Ken Lewis, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke were questioned by subsequent congressional inquiry.

It should be beyond any reasonable doubt, to anyone with a clear recollection of those events, that Lewis was forceably coerced by Paulson and Bernanke NOT TO DISCLOSE the Merrill merger. And we reprint that testimony, as reported by the media (who apparently and conspicuously have since forgotten) below:

Lewis testified for over four hours in Cuomo’s New York offices on Feb. 26, 2009. 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.

Now, this IS the same Andrew Cuomo who is prosecuting this guy today for failure to disclose the merger to shareholders. AND IN FACT, one can make the argument that Lewis threatened to invoke the infamous MAC (material adverse clause) NOT TO EXTORT MORE TARP  but in fact TO PROTECT HIS SHAREHOLDERS (after all, if Lewis wanted 25 billion more he could have just written “50″ on Paulson’s bar napkin).

And furthermore …

The Wall Street Journal previously reported on Feb. 5, 2009, 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.

And if that is not enough, how could one forget the perspiring “I don’t recollect” Paulson and the squirming “I don’t recall” Bernanke in congressional testimony, wriggling  over evidence of their culpability in this coverup, all in the same fashion as the AIG coverup for which Bernanke is now being held to the fire, in recent ISSA subpeona’s showing his disagreement with FED staff over public disclosure (sound familiar?) and even the decision to bail out AIG at all.

We also told everyone who cared to listen back then, that Lewis was going to be made a scapegoat for threatening to invoke the MAC clause, and that Paulson and Bernanke would double cross him for that in the end.

AND HERE IT IS FOLKS, the Potomac double standard in full regalia. Apparently, on Captial Hill, there is no honor– even among thieves. But there is revenge, and there is irony, and there is an example to be made when you stand up to the powerful Camarilla of our Mafia-style autocracy. The double-cross is clear. The irony is that the populace revolt has turned banks into a diversion, to take the blame off regulators and policy makers, and to focus all the angst on Scapegoats like Lewis.

Again, this is not to say “Poor, poor Lewis”. They are all unconscionable criminals, and if you sprayed lighter fluid on the lot of them, and lit the bunch, I wouldn’t piss on the blaze to put it out. But when the only CEO who may have (and again I say may have) shown a tiny shred of decency throughout this whole debacle, stood up against those traitors on the Hill to protect shareholders–such irreverance is dealt with harshly. And the very same media and prosecutors who seemed to side with Lewis then, now have his head on a platter, as if their frontal lobes were completely removed, and all memory of 10 months ago along with it.

Now there are those who would argue that, within the complex web of deceit, that there are counter motives and double agents and all other sorts of convoluted strategies to pull Lewis out of seclusion for the express purpose of raking up the truth about Bernanke, and dragging Paulson back into the fray, and ultimately placing the spotlight back on them, as Lewis attempts now to defend these charges.

If so, where are Lewis’ advocates in the media today? What is this Stepford-like reporting of Lewis as the poster child for the evil bankers? Is this to be the “reconfirm Bernanke AND get him off the hook two-fer”? FOR SHAME if it is.

 Time will tell. Time will “out” this damn’d spot indeed.

:POSTSCRIPT:
FINALLY, TWO DAYS LATER.

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