10:30: Everybody say, “Hi Ken.” Hi Ken.
The acquisition of Merrill Lynch apparently created “what looks to be the preeminent investment bank and brokerage firm the world.”
Sidebar: In light of the fact that Bernanke seems to be emerging as the enforcer of the operation, this kill Lewis with kindness/just straight up kill him bit is most excellent:
One thing Bank of America wanted at that time: more certainty about the government’s willingness to help. The bank sought to arrange a conversation between Messrs. Lewis and Bernanke on New Year’s Eve.
According to notes Mr. Lewis took during that conversation, Mr. Bernanke said: “We will not leave you in the lurch.” The Fed chairman told Mr. Lewis that Bank of America was “a strong company that has acted very appropriately throughout very difficult circumstances.” The notes are among the documents in the possession of the congressional committee.
Mr. Bernanke ended the call by wishing Mr. Lewis a Happy New Year.
10:41: You see, uh, I wasn’t scared of the threat, per se, (I’ve been in plenty of bar fights and figured I could take ‘em), but I was afraid of what the existence of the threat meant. Like, if Paulnanke was making a threat, you had to assume the situation for the US of A was really bad.
Chairman Edolphus: I have no idea what you just said.
Lewis: Me neither. Please don’t ask me to say it again. Draw your own conclusions.
Rep. Kucinich: I’m going to ask you questions, and if I have to, I’m going to interrupt and be a dick, k?
Lewis: K.
Rep Issa: When you called them and were like, I’ve been drinking and was thinking, maybe I’ll pull the MAC, were you doing it because of a duty to shareholders.
Lewis: Hell yes it was! I love BAC shareholders. I’d take a bullet for them. Can everyone please note that? I just want to keep my job.
Rep. Issa: On a scale of 1 to 10, in terms of pressure, one being Paulson as a used car salesman, seeing you walking up onto the lot and figuring, “I can take this hick,” sidling up to you and going, “What do we have to do to get you in this lemon today” and ten being you, waking up with a horse head in your bed, how did Paulnanke act?
Lewis: Can you give me an example of what 4 would be like?
Rep. Kucinich: Did you ask the government for a letter on the deal?
Lewis: I don’t remember.
Rep. Kucinich: You’re under oath. You’re saying you don’t remember.
Lewis: Yeah. Can’t recall.
Rep. Kucinich: Paulson and Bernanke are outside this room, listening in. Do you still not remember?
Lewis: I don’t remember! I was blacked out for the better half of this decade!
I don’t get why this is funny but Rep. Kanjorksi asks what the ten companies in Fortune 500 are that BAC doesn’t have business relations with, to giggles from Lewis and himself. Was this a sex joke?
For the millionth time, Lewis (supposedly) wasn’t scared of losing his job or spleen, what made him shit his pants was how serious the situation must have been if Paulnanke were even going there. Got it? He wasn’t scared of them. Once you’ve insulted the girlfriend of a 400 pound trucker named Bubba and had your ass hauled out to back alley behind the local watering hole, and had multiple bottles broken over your face, you’re not scared of gettin’ roughed up by a coupla Ivy League pusses.
Lewis has remained relatively calm up until, but Rep. Cummings is up meaning here comes the stutter.
11:25: Rep. Cummings: You’re lying! Fuck you! No! Shut up! They threatened you, you were scared, who wouldn’t be scared of Paulson? I’d be scared of Paulson and look at me? I could fuck everyone in this room up. Stop playing nice. Start gettin’ real!
A collection of words that don’t necessarily mean anything: “maybe you need to be inconsistent and tell us how you felt.”
11:28: Rep. Malibu Ken also doesn’t buy Paulnanke didn’t threaten Lewis. The problem here, as everyone not in Washington can see, is that Congress is speaking and K to the L is speaking and they’re all saying the same thing but everyone in the room didn’t realize that when you feel resistance from your eardrum, you have to stop pushing the q-tip, not push it harder, and now we’re all being punished as a a result. The threat happened, people! Paulnanke made it. It was put out there. What Lewis is trying to argue (for the camera, and the boys back home) is that the threat didn’t scare him, it just made him see how dire the situation was. He gets threatened all the time, it’s NBD.
Rep. Issa apparently gets this!
Sidebar: can Maxine please excuse herself from the compensation hearing and bust in a side door? 1) because we need to spice this up a bit 2) because while this seemingly has nothing to do with Goldman Sachs, we have it on good authority Maxie has got in her head that Paulson and Bernanke made the threats at the behest of Lloyd Blankfein 3) because today’s proceedings needs more exchanges like this:
Waters: [Shouts in a way that makes even Maxine Waters scared of Maxine Waters, about something, which is unclear, proceeds to demand an answer.]
Ken Lewis [with a 'you crazy ho' expression on his face]: “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
11:55: Some Lady Rep is talking about those Merrill bonuses.
Rep whose name I didn’t catch: Your risk officer missed a $12 billion loss.
Lewis: I wouldn’t say he missed it, Bob.
Intermission. We’re back at 12:30.
just cracked a cold one and opened up a bag of cheetos….
I bet he is a really good kisser.
Equionox Staffer
He’s kinda swaying like Ray Charles…must be the pre-game Boones!
YIKES. You’ve also got Maxine in the compensation hearings making an ass of herself! What to watch?
@4 – Split screen dude
“My name is Ken Lewis, and I am an alcoholic, errrrr… CEO of Bank of America.”
Thanks, Idiot Congressmen, for establishing the clear facts for a BAC shareholders class action lawsuit win against the govt. Everyone, open your wallets and hand over your cash to them– 98.9% of it to their legal counsel and 1.1% to the aggrieved.
Where is Maxine???
maybe that’s what it looks like if you’ve got astigmatism and cataracts…
@8 see @4 and try again
Did I just see Hank Paulson in the front row of the audience next to KL’s brother, just in from Italy?
This is Bananas!
B-A-N-A-N-A-S!
What’s the over/under on KL getting sacked during or after this hearing? Are there lines open on the overseas gambling sites?
Wow. Ken just gave us a Greg Michaels device, the “I’ll say it and you make your own conclusions” trick.
toast.
@13: it’ll happen soon enough. As an equity analyst once said: I’m never wrong. I may be early but I’m never wrong.
this committee is shockingly well-informed and articulate. where’s maxine w. lighten the mood?
If I was Ken Lewis, I would just admit to using steroids and fertility drugs and be done with it.
BOOM!
@17– that’s because you are viewing a sock puppet show. Ben and Hen are actually below the desks, engaging in ventriloquy.
Na na na na hey hey hey good bye
@14
Greg Michaels just acts all naive because the thinks bess finds that cute
“gee guys, what do you all think about bonusses this year, do you think they’ll be big?”
Dennis Kucinich is batting #2? What the . . . ?
Now I get it. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform wants everyone to know they are Players, with power to torment bank CEOs and question Treasury Secretaries and Fed Chairmen. Remember that the next time they call.
Maybe they’ll try to make Bernanke look bad, to make replacing him with Larry Summers look better, but otherwise nothing is going to happen here.
This is the business we chose.
I bet Ken Lewis is wishing Maxine Waters bursts through the door right now with a handful of her own questions.
This has the same feeling as the Clemens hearing.
Who is Greg Michaels?
@13 Over/under bets apply to ordinal measurements. For binary outcomes, such as getting sacked or not getting sacked, I believe you’re looking to find out what odds are being laid/taken.
Does he always stutter or just when he’s stumped?
@27 – Dartmouth grad?
@26
tgfd’s retarded cousin from wyoming
would be even more entertaining with paulson and bernanke testifying today too
@30 I believe he is from Montana
Watching the Executive Pay hearing in split. Barney’s put on some freshmen 15 since his GQ shoot. He must have starved himself before the pictures.
yeah, it’d be like an episode of the 3 Stooges
@27…Natural gas trading quant?
@32 his real last name is cyrus
Today must be the happiest day John Thain’s had since January.
I could watch Dennis Kuchinich whine all day long. And I pesonally think he is involved in some crazy sex with his hot wife.
Dennis Kuchinich is a hermaphrodite.
Who is the redhead sitting behind Ken Lewis? Attorney? PR chick? She is annoying.
I said I was strongly considering a MAC… and fries… and a Boone McFlurry.
On my fourth beer since the start of this thing. How’s everybody else doing.
Boone McFlurry sounds delicious, I’ll take 2.
Maxine in the house and she ain’t talking Laker trash neither.
I think this just goes to demonstrate that Ken Lewis has the balls to throw anyone under the bus for his job.
I bet Kenny Boy is hung like a moose.
@27 intern! binary outcome is one class of ordinal measurement: 1= event occurs; 0 event does not occur. Over/under for binary case corresponds to probability the event occurs, or “odds” in your venacular. Study harder.
@29/35 Nope, just not retarded. Everyone should know what an over/under is. For what it’s worth though, I had to look up ordinal scale on Wikipedia to make sure I used the right term, so I wouldn’t get flamed. -27
@49 – Didn’t I beat you up in high school?
somebody answer that fucking phone!
@Dealbreaker-
STOP hiding the comments. very annoying.
how many times do I have to tell you, Elijah, in-door FUCKING voice!
who let Sam L Jackson in to the hearing?
Elijah Cummings is SHAFT. A bad-mother-shut-your-mouth.
But I’m talking about SHAFT!
@54 No shit. I wish I was taping this…
is it me, or does kenny boy look scared? the guy is a bumblin’, stumblin’, cotton mouthed buffoon! and this guy was the “banker of the year”?
You guys are clearly smarter than I am. Next time you talk to your bookie, please ask him for the over/under on the Lakers winning the championship. He won’t tell you you’re an idiot and ask if you actually mean the over/under on total points scored in game 4. -27/49
If I was Kenny, I wouldn’t be wearing pants.
If I were Kenny I would be wearing a diaper
I don’t understand why everyone is hinged on the word ‘threat’ and that Ken Lewis was threatened. What, is he like a fuzzy, wide-eyed kitten stranded in the middle of regulatory traffic?
58 a bookie -what a credible expert- is that high school dropout your statistics tutor?
someone get Ken Lewis a shamwow to cry into
@61 I think you confuse “threat” and “threatened” with “fright” and “frightened”.
max is back! I saw her in the box. could it be, will they cut to the compensation hearing? please provide soundbites,I beg of you cnbc. it’s got to be better than listening to boones boy…
@13 here. I was asking the over/under in re the time KL would get sacked during/after the hearing, although maybe this was not clear.
Of note though…KL is not wearing his red tie, per BAC loyalist policy. Could this possibly mean that the sacking event/resignation has already occured?
Please tell me someone got a screen shot of that guy with the blue pen picking his nose with it. WTF?!
Maxine and Elijah should get their own cable talk show. It would be like a slightly more intelligent version of “The Dark Side with Nat X”
@62 – that bookie could be doing your job except he couldn’t afford the pay cut
68 sure, it’s easy to pick on the darkies. The other 533 are so much more intelligent, right?
69 wow, you’re almost funny
@70 aren’t they?
Boone’s time!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4s0nzsU1Wg
@72- yeah Bachmann is a genius, I heard.
@71 nice comeback
BANZAI7 NEWS — House Republican staffers said Federal Reserve and Treasury officials overstepped their authority by using enhanced interrogation techniques to strong arm Bank of America Corp. to complete its Merrill Lynch & Co. purchase, in a memo obtained by BANZAI7 News.
The memo prepared by the staffers for Republican lawmakers at a House Hindsight Committee hearing tomorrow cites what it identifies as excerpts from internal Fed e-mails to support their stance. The committee issued a subpoena to the Fed yesterday for documents related to the transaction together with explanatory footnotes written in third grade English.
Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis, who will testify at the hearing in Washington, told New York state investigators in February that he was bullied in December by Fed Warlord Ben S. Bernanke and former Bailout Czar Henry Paulson to lean over and do 200 push-ups before schtupping his own shareholders by acquiring Merrill Lynch at the original stupendously bloated price. He could not do the push-ups, so he obliged them by proceeding to screw his own shareholders.
The memo said that Richmond Fed Waterboard of Directors Chairman Jeffrey Slacker wrote in a Dec. 20 e-mail that Bernanke intended to “make it even more clear that if they play the material adverse change card and they need assistance, Lewis will have to change his name to Mr. Gone and will not be able to fulfill his dream of playing “Mr Savy Wall Street Bigshot Investment Banker,” referring to a threat by Bank of America to break off its deal with Merrill. Screwless Lewis’ says his high priced lawyers and advisers told him “sounds serious, go ahead and mislead your shareholders, the SEC will never know the difference.”
Attempts to contact former Merrill CEO John Thain, who is rumored to be undergoing gender change surgery in Thailand and was last seen carrying a classic French porta-potty on the set of PBS Antique Road Show, were unsuccessful.
Somewhere on the banks of the Cahulawassee River:
HANK: What you gonna do with that one? (motioning to KEN)
BEN: He’s got a purdy mouth.
77 LMAO!
“It will probably be a lot more fun, however, to read Bess Levin’s liveblog at DealBreaker.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/watch-ken-lewis-squirm-live-2009-6
80 FTW!
@80 are you not in agreement?
82, 80 here. FTW = “for the win” … of course i’m in agreement, dude. I want to marry Bess!
she just won’t return my calls ;(