Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch - and the government's role in the deal - are the subject of a hearing Thursday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Bank of America executives said they were told their top brass would be fired if they attempted to renegotiate their bid for Merrill by declaring what's known as a "material adverse change" (MAC) - a clause in their acquisition agreement that would allow them to walk away or renegotiate the price in light of Merrill's mounting losses.
"The Treasury and the Fed strongly stated that if we were to invoke the MAC clause and fail to close this transaction, they would remove the board and management due to the risk we would create in the system," according to draft talking points prepared by company attorneys for Mr. Lewis ahead of a Dec. 22, 2008, board meeting.
(Emphisis mine)
How does the Fed come to have the authority to fire the board and management of a private company?
If they can do this to BofA, who could resist them? (Calling Lord Acton . . .)
~~~
And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.
- Lord Acton
No comments:
Post a Comment
By submitting your comments, you agree that you alone are responsible for their content. I reserve the right to remove comments I deem offensive or inappropriate, at my discretion.
Threatening, abusive and illegal comments may be reported to the proper authorities. Don't be stupid. If the CIA, FBI or the Secret Service knocks on my door and asks questions about you, I will rat you out in seconds. (Sooner if I call them about you.)
Comments made below will be subject to public viewing.
Comments are subject to moderation.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that there are people out there in the wilds of the Internet that think it cute to post racist and Nazi garbage on other peoples websites. Some of these thugs are even enabled by people who should know better. In my opinion, both the thugs and their enablers are worse than spammers.
I have recently made enemies with a particular group of these people who have done just that on another website. I don't intend to make it easy for them to do that to me.
In light of that, comment moderation will be used here on this humble and very obscure little blog.
I will check in several times each day to approve appropriate comments.
For the most part, I will allow just about any type of comment except for spam and Kilgorian excrement.