I Don’t Want To Be Bank Of America’s Ken Lewis

I was just reading about Bank of America (BAC) needing more capital to “absorb” Merrill Lynch.  The truth is starting to come out now.  Sometime in mid December, BAC indicated that it wouldn’t be able to pull off the MER acquisition unless it got more federal money.  Details on how much is going to be released on or around 1/20/09 according to the article in the WSJ. Here’s Ken Lewis who for all intents and purposes seemed to have BAC on cruise control.  He was counting down the days to his lucrative pension and retirement benefits, then low and behold, along comes the Countrywide and Merrill deals and now he’s mired deep in doo doo.

Merrill is a huge potential liability with culture issues between the steadfast salaried bankers and the high paid rainmaker investment bankers.  Merrill brass saw the writing on the wall and departed early.  To make matters worse, BAC stock has also been diving as of late, breaking $10/share today (Wednesday), trading in the high nines.  BAC has had to dilute their stock; employees prior to the Countrywide and MER acquisitions can’t feel very good about what’s happened to their stock options but then again in America you should be proud to have a job…even if you can’t make enough to pay your mortgage.   There’s also talk now about BAC cutting or holding off bonuses for employees this year.  It’s insanity.  When does it end?

There’s also an issue about why isn’t the Treasury being honest and open about this deal.  They are talking about slipping BAC more $$, but they didn’t say a word to the American public about this.  This is criminal.  ll the while Bernie Madoff sits in his penthouse and watches himself on CNBC. The Fed is not able to revoke his bail.  Yeah. We got some work to do in this here US of A!

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