Paulson Testified!
Today Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson testified that he did somewhat force Bank of America Corp to purchase Merrill Lynch. And that he did threaten to remove BOA management as well as CEO Kenneth Lewis if they refused to purchase Merrill. He said that it was legal for him to do so. After all the U.S government owes most of BOA via TARP money. Paulson also stated that everything was kept private so investors wouldn’t get scared and start selling their shares. He said he didn’t want to make things worse by going public. So basically what he’s saying is that he can do whatever he wants with our money, which is crap. A lot of people think Lewis is the victim here, but he’s not. He played Paulson just the same to get more money to reduce the losses of the deal. In the end, the American people lost about $20 billion dollars that we’ll never see again, and that’s what’s sad here. All the banks that would have failed, should have failed, and that includes BOA.
