Thank you U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff

From WSJ:

A federal judge threw out the Securities and Exchange Commission's proposed settlement with Bank of America over its disclosure of controversial bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch employees, in an unusual ruling that casts doubts about how the agency handles probes of major U.S. companies.

From Huffingtonpost.com:

Rakoff, in his ruling, found that the settlement "suggests a rather cynical relationship between the parties: the SEC 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."

Last year Bear Sterns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Washington Mutual, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch & others were on their way to insolvency, some getting bailed out by us tax payers, others being taken over and yet others being allowed to crash and burn.

BoA bailed out Merrill Lynch by "buying" them last year. There is apparently enough evidence to hold a trial to determine the truth that hopefully, will ultimately hold people accountable.

Thanks to Judge Rakoff's ruling, the real truth behind what was later revealed that Merrill, with the knowledge of Bank of America executives, paid Merrill employees $3.6 billion in bonuses just before the deal closed on Jan. 1.

That's $3.6B in bonuses paid to executives of a firm that lost over $27B and was basically insolvent just before getting "bought". The SEC's fine of $33M, as in million, is what the Judge threw out. Thank you!