The next Administration, whoever it may be, will feature a new direction on policies around economic and finance issues. That’s because, even if Barack Obama wins re-election, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has announced that he would leave his post. So you either get a Romney Presidency and an entirely new direction on these policies, or [...]

Yesterday, Bank of America fired off one of their biggest settlements yet, spending $2.4 billion to quiet claims with investors over their purchase of Merrill Lynch. As Lehman Brothers failed in September 2008, Bank of America agreed to buy Merrill Lynch. But in the weeks after that agreement, the bank tried unsuccessfully to scrap the [...]

So here’s another revelation of fraud for your Monday morning. Gretchen Morgenson has the story: Days before Bank of America shareholders approved the bank’s $50 billion purchase of Merrill Lynch in December 2008, top bank executives were advised that losses at the investment firm would most likely hammer the combined companies’ earnings in the years [...]

Bank of America has not been specifically named as a target of Wikileaks, at least not directly; everything out there is more on the order of speculation. And yet they either know something particular about that speculation or they’re just proceeding with an abundance of caution. They’ve begun a document review led by a “chief [...]

Yesterday, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a lawsuit against Bank of America, its former Chairman Ken Lewis and CFO Joseph L. Price on civil fraud charges, alleging that they hid information from shareholders about large losses at the investment firm Merrill Lynch, which BofA picked up in a merger, and that they lied [...]