Cuomo has been examining executive pay at banks that received money from the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. Merrill and Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America have received about $45 billion. Bank of America bought Merrill on Jan. 1. The letter is the latest salvo in Cuomo’s battle with Lewis over the individualized bonus data. In the letter, Cuomo and Frank say Merrill’s $3.6 billion in bonuses and Bank of America’s $3.3 billion should be made public.“Taxpayers who are footing the bill obviously demand accountability and want to know who received these funds and why,” the letter said.
It is not clear just how Bank Of America would suffer "grave and irreparable harm" if the Merrill employees were identified (which they already have been by numerous media outlets) or what their bonuses were (Cuomo and Frank just need to call (or issue a subpoena to) any self-respecting headhunter to get the exact number to the 3rd decimal place, as all these individuals are currently peddling their services to whatever bank would want the public scrutiny associated with hiring them), seeing how this was a one-time event as the likelihood of $30 million + bonuses in the next 5 years is 0 to negative, and is just BofA's most recent attempt at "strawmanning." Of course, the information of when Lewis et al knew about what bonuses would be (given their size) and keeping in mind Merrill's atrocious performance (i.e. were bonuses determined before or after) does have the capacity to cause some quite grave harm to Lewis' Wall Street career.
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