The Ticker

Lewis Silenced, Threatened Over Merrill By Bernanke And Paulson

By Kirk Shinkle

Posted: April 23, 2009

Bank of America's Ken Lewis' testimony sheds some light on the gory details of last year's crisis management. From the WSJ (sub. req.):

Mr. Lewis, testifying under oath before New York's attorney general in February, told prosecutors that he believed Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke were instructing him to keep silent about deepening financial difficulties at Merrill, the struggling brokerage giant. As part of his testimony, a transcript of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lewis said the government wanted him to keep quiet while the two sides negotiated government funding to help BofA absorb Merrill and its huge losses.

The cost of refusing to keep shareholders in the dark might have been his job:

The Wall Street Journal previously reported, in a page-one story on Feb. 5, that Mr. Lewis agreed to proceed with the Merrill merger only after Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke said that he and his board would lose their jobs if Bank of America backed out of the deal. Mr. Lewis's testimony with the New York attorney general's office corroborates that account.

At a time when Bernanke, the Fed and Paulson' replacement at Treasury Tim Geithner are facing charges of weakness and inefficiency its interesting to get the details on their willingness to strong-arm major financial sector players during the crisis.

Update: Bernanke denies any threats to Lewis.

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Jason of WI @ Oct 05, 2009 08:39:46 AM

Naked Short Selling

o date nothing has been done to rectify or settle accounts of myself, friends along with 50,000 other investors who were harmed by this fraud. The DTCC, SEC, DOJ, FBI, CIA,FINRA, countless Congress members, Several State Governors and multiple State agencies, as well as an obsurd amount of elected officials have been notified of this theft, however to date nothing has been done. OH ya and yes the president of the USA included, is now aware of CMKX! Insiders dumped 700 billion shares into the market - 622 billion were unregistered and $250 million was stolen from shareholders. No one is taking any action, why ? If a bank gets robbed the police are on their way in minutes, or the government steps in with funds. This revoked company initiated a cert pull to trap naked short sellers. I believe there is possible insider SEC and DTCC fraud and cover-ups involved in this case hence they will keep this going for years. If people are still unclear as to what exactly NSS is, there is a slide show narrated by Patrick Byrnes, the CEO of Overstock.com. Combine the information in the slide show, coupled with what you are seeing in the financial markets and you will suddenly see an entirely different picture.

We, the shareholders of CMKX, are aiming to make a difference.

http://www.businessjive.com/

We never recieved a report on the results and we believe we have at least a trillion counterfiet shares sold into the market. Regulators have failed to protect us from the obvious fraud even though they were involved long before the halt in trading. Our claims have reverted to many other companies and we don't even know how that was done. The SEC has done nothing to protect the people.

The SEC has, for decades, permitted an illegal action on Wall Street called Naked Short Selling.............Phantom Shares............Counterfeit Shares........Fails to Deliver. This is where a Broker sells shares of a stock that they don't have and never make arrangements to acquire. The money spent by investors simply GOES SOUTH. This act has caused an average of 6 billion dollars to be stolen out of the stock market every day.

The SEC, just two years ago,denied that Naked Short Selling ever existed. The dismal state of economy is a direct result of the ramifications on NSS. Robert Mahue was brought in by a small diamond exploration company named CMKX to expose this illegal activity.

CMKX WENT THROUGH THE LARGEST NAKED SHORT IN THE HOSTORY OF THE U.S. Nearly 7 TRILLION Naked Short Shares were sold. Robert Mahue squeezed the Brokers to come up with Billions of dollars to cover these illegal sales. I am a stock holder in CMKX. The SEC is aware of a huge trust that Mr.Mahue set up to compensate CMKX share holders because of NSS. The SEC and or the government are holding up the distribution of these funds. The money is sitting, waiting to be sent out to damaged share holders. The SEC has the ability to release these funds.............but are not doing so.

Naked Short Selling of CA @ May 05, 2009 20:59:12 PM

CMKX

CMKX SHAREHOLDER HAVE BEEN CHEATED BY THE GOVT. THEY KNEW THE NAKED SHORTING WAS TAKING PLACE AND THEY LEFT IT GO ON AND ON. iNSTITUTIONS WERE MAKING BIG MONEY BY NAKED SHORTING STOCKS [ NOT JUST CMKX AND ALSO OVERSTOCK .COM] THE WHOLE STOCK MARKET IS IN SEVERE DANGER OF THIS PRACTICE.

MARK MCNEELY of PA @ May 03, 2009 18:48:11 PM

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The Ticker

The Ticker

Kirk Shinkle is a senior editor at U.S. News. He writes daily about ups and downs in equity markets, sectors and stocks. Formerly, he covered business and economics on both coasts for Investor's Business Daily.

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