Free Republic

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bank of America Corp, former Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis and former Chief Financial Officer Joe Price were charged with fraud by New York's attorney general over the bank's acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo accused the defendants of intentionally failing to disclose massive losses that Merrill was racking up prior to December 5 shareholder votes on the merger. After concealing the losses, the defendants then told the federal government the bank would back out of the merger if it did not get billions of dollars of taxpayer help, according to Cuomo.

Government regulators threatened to remove top Bank of America executives if they backed out of a buyout of failing brokerage giant Merrill Lynch, and offered 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 attorneys as well as board meeting "talking points" prepared for then-Bank of America Chief Executive Ken Lewis - offer new insight into the hardball tactics that produced one of the biggest deals negotiated during the late 2008 global financial crisis, one that is still reverberating on...

Mr Paulson later testified to Mr Cuomo that he only threatened Mr Lewis "at the request of Chairman Bernanke."

Bank of America to receive $138bn lifeline from US Bank of America (BoA) has received an extra $20bn in US government funding and a guarantee back-stopping the losses on $118bn of its most toxic assets in the latest bail-out of a major US financial institution. By James Quinn, Wall Street Correspondent Last Updated: 6:31AM GMT 16 Jan 2009 The banking conglomerate had been in negotiations with the US Treasury about the fresh round of funding - which comes on top of $25bn received in October - since the middle of December, when it realised it woud have to brace itself...

Where is the government's bank-bailout money going? In part to pay for Wall Street banker Peter Kraus's $37 million Park Avenue spread. Kraus had excellent timing. He signed on as a top executive at Merrill Lynch in May, negotiating a $50 million pay package, with much of that guaranteed if the company was sold. He didn't officially start until September. A couple of days later, Merrill CEO John Thain sold the company to Bank of America for $50 billion, triggering a $25 million payout under Kraus's contract. Bank of America got a $25 billion capital injection from the government. Kraus...

Part One What do Bill and Hillary Clinton, alleged mobsters, Stan Lee, presidential pardons, federal indictments for fraud, the Democratic Party and Hollywood luminaries such as Barbra Streisand, John Travolta, Cher and Diana Ross have in common? The answer is a man charged with robbing Peter to pay Paul through an elaborate scheme of alleged securities and bank fraud that involve the creator of Spiderman and the X-Men comic superheros, securities firms such as Merrill Lynch and Spear Leeds & Kellogg, political heavyweights David Rosen, Aaron Tonken and Terry McAuliffe. Now, the 54-year-old Peter Paul, aka Eric Becker, aka...