The latest award goes to Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America. Despite taking billions in federal TARP funds, he is refusing to reveal what he knows about the $3.6 billion that went to Merrill Lynch senior staff (some 700 people) on the eve of his institution taking over the failing investment bank. Not only did he choose not to talk, but he had the temerity to travel to New York via his $50 million corporate jet, then by luxury SUV to discussions with the New York Attorney General, where he again refused to talk. Will he refuse, a la Karl Rove and others, to honor a subpoena?
What Mr. Lewis and other bailed out bankers fail to recognize is that they no longer work for themselves. They work for us. One wonders just why nationalizing certain failing banks is such a bad idea. It is one way to force them to replace their management teams and return a sense of sanity and reality to their operations. This is same Ken Lewis who, with a straight face and under oath, told a Congressional committee that they got it — that they understood that times were different, that they had to act differently now that they had accepted TARP funds. Somehow stonewalling doesn’t square with “getting it.”
So, Ken Lewis, you are hereby awarded the Let Them Eat Cake Award.
And the audience rises to its feet to boo him as he approaches the podium to accept his award.
Proving he “gets it,” he remarks, “Thank you, so much, for this wonderful award.”
Ain’ it a shame?