A New Hero

As promised a few weeks ago, US District Court Judge Jed Rakoff rejected the settlement between Bank of America's Merrill Lynch and the Securities Exchange Commission. The initial complaint by the SEC was over the mega-bonuses that Merrill awarded it's employees prior to the end of the year. Remember? Merrill is the one who ran into the arms of Bank of America because it was going belly-up? But the so-called geniuses of Merrill apparently still "deserved" a bonus? Go figure. Anyway, the SEC filed a complaint because of Bank of America's failure to disclose this information to it's shareholders.

Here it is, in the judge's own words, the settlement "does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice or morality."

Gotta' love it. On the same day President Obama remembered that his administration promised to reform Wall Street (oh, yeah, that idea) having lost their window of opportunity, it took a federal judge to begin the process. Hello! Wall Street! Even the SEC was willing, yet again, to go lightly on who it was regulating (in this case Bank of America) and this brave, heroic judge said it wasn't enough.