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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's go back, audio sound bite-wise, to me on my program, this program. This is March 12th of this year... RUSH ARCHIVE: The TARP money was not used for its original purpose. There's something else out there, Jordan, you need to know. The Federal Reserve, before the TARP bailout, made loans totaling $2 trillion and they will not tell us to whom. We don't know who got the money. Whether the Fed loans it or the government prints it, it's our money. So you can talk about the $700 billion TARP. You can talk about the $787...

March 19, 2010, 7:05 a.m. EDT Merrill staffers reportedly warned SEC over Lehman By Simon Kennedy, MarketWatch LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Former Merrill Lynch officials warned the Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Reserve that Lehman Brothers was incorrectly calculating its liquidity position months before its collapse, according to a published media report. Separately, Lehman also reportedly renewed its efforts to have the sale of assets to Barclays (LSE:UK:BARC) (NYSE:BCS) reexamined by a court, claiming that the U.K. bank had earned a windfall of over $11 billion from the deal. Former staffers at Merrill, which was later acquired by Bank of...

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Thursday it was bringing civil charges against senior Bank of America executives, including former company CEO Ken Lewis, for their role in the company's controversial purchase of Merrill Lynch. Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission said it had struck a $150 million settlement agreement with BofA over its decision to pay billions of dollars in bonuses to former Merrill employees. The lawsuit contends that the bank's management team understated the losses at Merrill in order to get shareholders to approve the deal, then subsequently overstated the firm's willingness to terminate the merger to...

Wall Street sees carbon trading and related derivative products as the next big thing in financial innovation. Critics say it's the next big financial mess. Carbon trading provides a way for companies to stimulate green energy and carbon reduction projects by financing them through the purchase of carbon credits. Such trading has slowed over the past year or so amid uncertainty about regulations and global emissions targets. Eventually, though, many expect carbon trading to balloon into a multitrillion-dollar business. FOE and other environmental groups have been pressing the Senate to pass legislation that puts strict limits on banks' involvement in...

A senior Chinese official criticized foreign banks for selling derivatives with “fraudulent characteristics” that led to heavy losses for state-owned airlines and other companies. “Some international investment banks are the biggest villains,” said Li Wei, deputy chairman of the agency that oversees China’s biggest state companies, in a commentary in this week’s edition of the Study Times, a newspaper published by the school of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. The comments were the Chinese government’s most pointed public criticism yet of foreign institutions. Li’s agency said in September it would support companies that want to challenge the contracts in court....

Government regulators threatened to remove top Bank of America executives in December if they didn't acquire Merrill Lynch, but also agreed to provide taxpayer funds to compensate for Merrill's poor performance, according to company records obtained by The Washington Times. The documents -- e-mails between bank executives and their outside lawyers as well as board-meeting talking points prepared for then-Chief Executive Ken Lewis -- indicate that former Treasury Secretary Henry Mr. Paulson Jr. and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S. Bernanke promised to give the bank taxpayer bailout funds to compensate them for Merrill's poor performance. Summaries written by the...

Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis was the classic American success story. But he had a weakness for big deals—and his resignation was inevitable from the second he agreed to take on Merrill Lynch. On Wall Street, one man’s exit strategy is another man’s demise. In a world where enough is never enough, nabbing that last career-capping acquisition can kill you. Bank of America’s soon to be former CEO, Ken Lewis, knows that all too well. He was ruined by his personal nemesis—the drive to bigness. And bad timing. As the old gambling song says, “You got to know when...

Last September, as Wall Street turned to rubble and panic threatened to come unleashed, Ken Lewis, the CEO of Bank of America, agreed to swallow one of the country’s most toxic investment houses. The deal was not altogether voluntary; as details have slowly emerged, the coercive role of the Fed and Treasury has loomed larger. What exactly happened in the weeks leading up to the merger? Did the deal save us all from economic apocalypse? And what does the government’s unprecedented role in it portend for the future of our economy? It’s been almost a year since Bank of America...

WASHINGTON -- Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson misled Congress and along with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke looked the other way as major mistakes were made at Bank of America Corp. even as the government was preparing a $20 billion aid package for the firm, U.S. lawmakers charged Thursday. Mr. Paulson, making his first appearance on Capitol Hill since leaving office in January at a hearing before House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, defended the government's response to the financial crisis and his role in ensuring Bank of America closed its transaction for Merrill Lynch & Co. But lawmakers,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers on Thursday slammed former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson over the government's role in Bank of America's merger with Merrill Lynch, saying authorities suppressed information about losses and bullied executives into going through with the deal. "The American people, investors, and the Congress were kept in the dark," Rep. Edolphus Towns told Paulson at a hearing. "There was no oversight to determine whether this arrangement made sense. In my view, this is unacceptable and must be prevented from happening again," said Towns, the New York Democrat who chairs the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform...

Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson misled Congress and along with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke looked the other way as major mistakes were made at Bank of America (BAC) even as the government was preparing a $20 billion aid package for the firm, U.S. lawmakers charged Thursday.

Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Thursday denied he and other government officials did anything improper or illegal when they put pressure on Bank of America (BAC: 13.2201, -0.2099, -1.56%) to complete a rushed merger with Merrill Lynch late last year. While admitting that pressure was applied, Paulson said every action taken at the time was made to fend off a potentially catastrophic collapse of the global financial system.

Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says he was justified last year in suggesting that Bank of America Corp.'s chief executive could lose his job if the bank backed out on plans to buy troubled Merrill Lynch. His admission, included in written testimony for a House of Representatives hearing on Thursday, comes as Congress debates the government's role in managing financial firms that accept billions of dollars in aid. Bank of America Corp., which went through with the merger, ultimately accepted $45 billion in federal aid, including $20 billion to absorb the financial hit it took from acquiring Merrill Lynch &...

Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says he pressured Bank of America last year to go through with its plans to buy Merrill Lynch but didn't tell the bank's chief to hide losses from shareholders.

Former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., in defending the federal government's push for a reluctant Bank of America to complete a planned takeover of Merrill Lynch late last year, said it would have been "unthinkable" and potentially illegal for the bank to scuttle the deal. Mr. Paulson, who is set to testify Thursday morning on the merger before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a prepared statement submitted to the panel that he "intended to deliver a strong message" to Bank of American Chief Executive Ken Lewis that backing out of the deal would be a...

n prepared remarks for a Congressional hearing obtained today by ABC News, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson admits telling Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis that the Federal Reserve could remove the bank's board members if they backed out of their proposed merger with Merrill Lynch last December. In prepared remarks for a Congressional hearing obtained Wednesday by ABC News, former Treasury... (AP Graphics) On Thursday morning, Paulson will defend his actions before the House Oversight Committee in the last of three hearings that the panel has conducted on the controversial merger. When Bank of America considered scuttling the merger...

Capitol Hill Republicans investigating the fire sale purchase of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America last year are digging for evidence of improper behavior by two Bush appointees – former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Right now, it’s unclear what rules apply. There is a new regime. What seemed prudent earlier has disappeared. I’m surprised Americans aren’t more panicked. Americans seem to accept a level of insecurity in their lives that Europeans wouldn’t tolerate. Paralysis is one response to this level of insecurity.” This might explain why my wife and I have taken no action to fix our finances. Although it’s also the case that we haven’t heard from our Merrill broker in nine months. The last time he called was well before the day in September when the government encouraged the shotgun sale of...

MBIA sues Merrill over CDO losses Thu Apr 30, 5:16 pm ET NEW YORK (Reuters) – MBIA Inc (MBI.N), the world's largest bond insurer, sued Merrill Lynch & Co on Thursday seeking damages for losses from complex debt securities it insured for the bank. The lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, seeks to void certain credit default swaps and related insurance contracts that MBIA, through a special purpose vehicle, wrote on the securities held by Merrill. The insurer wrote $5.7 billion in guarantees on these securities, which were packages of mortgages known as collateralized debt obligations...

Reporting from Charlotte, N.C. -- Amid the chorus of criticism that has descended on Kenneth Lewis, Bank of America Corp.'s embattled chief executive was re-elected to the company's board of directors today, but his fate as chairman remained unclear. Preliminary voting results from the company's annual meeting today showed that shareholders reelected Kenneth Lewis and 17 other directors who presided over the dramatic plunge in Bank of America's stock price during the financial crisis, according to a person familiar with the matter. However, it wasn't known yet whether Lewis will retain his position as board chairman, according to a person...