Countrywide

By William K. Black and L. Randall Wray William K. Black is an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is a white-collar criminologist and was a senior financial regulator. He is the author of…

This is a cross-post from the new economic blog Global Economic Intersection. Ratings agencies have been criticized for inadequately determining risk in the massive collection of debt securities created in the credit bubble.  A second…

Felix Salmon is right.  This is going to be a big, big problem for the financial institutions. A group of investors holding $16.5 billion of mortgage bonds took a step toward a possible suit against a Bank of America Corp unit for…

The drama at Bank of America continues with Ken Lewis testifying before Congress today.  Most of the events surround claims by Lewis that he was coerced into doing the Merrill deal by Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke.   I…

Here is the SEC press release regarding the fraud and insider trader alleged to have been perpetrated at Countrywide Financial, now a part of Bank of America (emphasis added):

It’s about time.  The SEC has finally charged a high level executive in the banking industry in connection with activities that led to the largest bubble in U.S. history.  The accused, as expected, is Angelo Mozilo, otherwise known as “The…

In the CNBC video below, Ken Lewis defends his company’s performance on the stress test and answers some pointed questions in the John Thain – Ben Bernanke – Ken Lewis – Hank Paulson he said she said match.  He also details how Bank of…

This is from BofA's website: Bank of America Corporation today announced the results of management and shareholder proposals at the company's 2009 annual meeting... All 18 directors were elected to the board by comfortable margins. In…

The Wall Street Journal is running a front-page story about John Thain today in which he  accuses Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis of lying about events surrounding the Bank of America - Merrill transaction and the ouster of Thain as a top…

I don't much like Ken Lewis. It should be fairly obvious to everyone that he is a man who has only his own interests at heart. But, his revelation that BofA bought Merrill Lynch for the agreed-upon September price, despite Merrill's having…