Tag: Fascism
CEO Says Government Pressured Bank Of America To Buy Merrill Lynch
House lawmakers today accused federal regulators of a gross misuse of power in orchestrating a “shotgun wedding” between Bank of America Corp. and Merrill Lynch & Co. that cost U.S. taxpayers $20 billion.
They also took aim at Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis, questioning whether he played dumb last fall as Merrill’s financial losses mounted and threatened not to go through with the merger to squeeze money from the government.
“Why did a private business deal announced in September and approved by shareholders in December — with no mention of government assistance — end up costing taxpayers $20 billion in January?” asked Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The panel has been investigating the deal, including whether federal officials pressured Lewis and urged him to keep quiet about Merrill Lynch’s financial problems. Not divulging that information would have violated Lewis’ fiduciary duty to the bank’s shareholders.
In testimony before the committee, Lewis said publicly for the first time that his job was threatened after he expressed second thoughts about the merger. Lewis said then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and federal regulators made clear that if the bank reneged on its promise they would force his ouster and that of board members at the bank.
“What gave me concern is that they gave that threat to a bank in good standing,” Lewis told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “So it showed the seriousness with which they thought that we should not” back out.
Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke also pledged government aid to Bank of America to help absorb the losses, Lewis said.
Bank of America ultimately received $45 billion from the government’s bank bailout program, $20 billion of which was tied to its acquisition of Merrill Lynch.
Lewis said he was never asked by Paulson or Bernanke to withhold information from his shareholders. However, Lewis said Paulson told him in a telephone call that the government was reluctant to put the terms of the deal in writing because it would have prompted public disclosure.
The Federal Reserve declined to comment on Lewis’ testimony.
A spokeswoman for Paulson has said the former Treasury secretary felt a letter would have been too vague to help Bank of America and only served to rattle markets by creating more questions than answers. She said questions about disclosures by the bank were left up to the Bank of America.
Towns said he plans to invite Bernanke and Paulson to testify at a later hearing.
Lawmakers on the committee said they were troubled by Lewis’ testimony as well as internal Fed documents related to the deal.
In one e-mail, Bernanke said he thought Lewis’ threat to pull out of the deal was a “bargaining chip” and “we do not see it as a very likely scenario at all.”
Other e-mails by federal analysts suggested they thought it suspect that Lewis claimed to be surprised by Merrill’s losses given the clear signs of a deteriorating economy.
An employee at the Richmond Federal Reserve said Bernanke had made it clear that if Bank of America backed out and needed financial assistance, “management is gone.”
Towns and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the committee’s top Republican, said the merger was an obvious “shotgun wedding” that came at the expense of the taxpayer.
However, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said he thought Lewis was the one who was pressuring the government.
“There’s been a misconception here that the government put a gun to the head of Bank of America, when it’s quite possible that it was the Bank of America that put a gun to the head of the Fed by threatening” to back out, Kucinich said.
Lewis said he did nothing wrong. In the end, the decision to go ahead with the acquisition — with the promise of government support — was in everyone’s best interest, he testified. “This course made sense for Bank of America and its shareholders, and made sense for the stability of the markets,” he said. “We viewed those two interests as consistent.”
Just a few weeks after the deal was completed, Bank of America’s fourth-quarter earnings report showed the hit taken by its balance sheet because of the Merrill Lynch transaction, which made Lewis the target of shareholder anger.
Each Day Brings Us Closer to the Death of America
Once again you have to rely on the foreign press for this kind of article.
The column here today is in the form of an ‘Open Letter’ to a writer who I will call only “Jim” though I am sure he or she will recognize who I am addressing. Jim expressed his concerns to me regarding the “leaning” of Obama to Socialistic thinking, stating, “His ‘first 100 days’ is a testimony to socialism which in my mind is worse than treason to what our great country has stood for, fought for, and paid for dearly in human lives.”
I get other letters that hold similar views and make like statements, though perhaps not all quite as eloquent. It makes me feel that somehow there are a lot more of these types of people than there are of the types that succeeded in putting this illegal office holding president in our highest and most revered place of governance.
I have to respond to Jim by saying to him and all others of a like mind, “You are on the right track with your thinking.”
The first thing we did wrong was to elect a president who has failed to prove that he legally qualifies for that office according to the requirements of the United States Constitution, the mighty document, put together by our founding fathers which calls for any applicant to be a natural born citizen of the United States. He should have been disqualified as a contender by the leadership of the Democrat Party as soon as he officially entered the race to participate in that party’s primaries.
The leadership of the party declared by any candidate should be responsible for at the very least, insuring Constitutional eligibility of a declared candidate to compete in the primary race for the office.
The Democrat Party either totally ignored their responsibility or deliberately bypassed it. In either case, they abridged their right to hold office themselves by such actions. You can’t just blame the dishonest candidate for entering his or her name while in violation of the Constitutional requirements; the overseers of the Party should share the blame for not making the ineligibility publicly known.
Obama holds office illegally, and can not be removed because of too many “bought and paid for” judges who owe their current positions in our judicial system to people going as far back as Clinton and Carter. George Bush was highly negligent in filling vacancies on the bench when he had a majority in both houses of Congress which could have reversed or at least mitigated the current discrepancy of liberal judges.
This “super elite” group has gotten more power and arrogance than should have ever been allowed to happen. As our country has struggled, these complicits have gained in strength and are probably vastly underwritten financially by the likes of communists like George Soros and the ACLU, both admitted Communist people and organizations.
These two organizations, Soros’s is called MoveOn.org, are in existence solely to bring America to its knees in deference to socialist/communist/Marxist philosophies. They will not finish until our Constitution is officially discarded and a Communist Manifesto is in its place. By that time, all signs of capitalism will have disappeared; large Capitalist manufacturing icons and financial institutions will disappear as the government takes control of our lives from cradle to grave as happens in all socialist countries.
There is not one successful socialist country in the world; United States and Great Britain were once models of successful countries, but the Muslims are succeeding in crippling and taking control of British mainland even to the point of creating “no-go” areas for non-Muslims which are increasing with time. One can only guess how much longer Britain will be able to exist as it has in the past.
Which provides the impetus for the many world-wide enclaves of envious and democracy hating people who wish to see America fall. Among the intelligent members of these dissidents it is known that they will never equal the nirvana of riches and comfort that has been the hallmark of America, it’s just that they don’t want anyone else to have it either. So if they can’t have it, no one should have it and they stop at nothing to make their point.
But the mysterious part of all this is how they have captured so many normal American Democrat minds convincing them that the elevation of all of these socialistic/communist people is good for America. There are, believe it or not, even quite a few Republicans, as high as 25 percent according to one poll, that go along with this brain-washing and nation changing that is being done to otherwise good common sense people.
In spite of all the highly evident information available every day as to the socialistic intentions of this president and his followers, they still insist that what is being done to this country will be beneficial. TO WHOM? Certainly not to us the average citizens and taxpayers who will be burdened heavily with tax bills to pay for the liberal excesses in spending; my guess is the anti-American foreign hate-mongers and even those in our midst will be the only ones benefitting from our government’s collapse.
I’m afraid that by the time they come out of their stupor and realize the dangers they’ve wished on us, it will be too late to salvage much of America.
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