... how hard the SEC tried to prevent that from happening.
I think it is interesting that on the day the President Obama delivered a reasoned and tough message to the financial industry, the Beltway gang (including many members of Congress) who are the servants of that financial industry, and to failed regulatory agencies that a Judge had this to say regarding the proposed SEC settlement with BoA:
[It] ...“does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality,”
Judge Rakoff astutely focuses on the cruel irony that those injured would be those paying:
The judge focused much of his criticism on the fact that the fine in the case would be paid by the bank’s shareholders, who were the ones that were supposed to have been injured by the lack of disclosure.
“It is quite something else for the very management that is accused of having lied to its shareholders to determine how much of those victims’ money should be used to make the case against the management go away,” the judge wrote.
That the SEC is a willing participant in the scam is not lost on Judge Rakoff:
The judge also criticized the S.E.C., which has been trying to step up the profile of its investigations unit. The judge quoted Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere’s Fan” in the end of his ruling to say that a cynic is someone “who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
The proposed settlement, the judge continued, “suggests a rather cynical relationship between the parties: the S.E.C. gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger; the bank’s management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators. And all this is done at the expense, not only of the shareholders, but also of the truth.”
Ah, yes - 'the truth' - that long forgotten core element of sustainable society. Fortunately, Judge Rakoff realizes its value and will force the SEC to take BoA to court.