Bank of America “is in serious, serious trouble now,” says St. John’s University law professor Anthony Sabino. “The judge’s rejection of the SEC settlement, which is of course rooted in the same transactions, will embolden Cuomo to attack BofA head on and get more info about just what happened at the bank when it took over Merrill.”
It will certainly force the SEC to go back to Bank of America and press for more information, Sabino says, and more money. The agency, under fire for being lax in its surveillance of Bernard Madoff, is between a rock and a hard place in wanting to act tough while working down its case load.
I have been on record against New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo when blanket statements were made regarding the loan modification industry as a whole.
You can either choose to be part of the problem or part of the solution. In this instance I commend and support Mr. Cuomo’s position. Had homeowners known about the bonuses being paid to these fraudulent executives, we would have thoughts differently about bailing out the banks that apparently didn’t need our tax dollars.
Hind sight is 20/20, so the question remains what are we going to do about this when the problem surfaces again?
History repeats (and in relative situations replicates) itself. What could we have done differently?