The Smartest Guy in the Room

"Oscar Wilde once famously said that a cynic is someone 'who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing,'" Rakoff wrote.

The proposed consent judgment in this case suggests a rather cynical relationship between the parties: the S.E.C. 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.

Rakoff's ruling may well mark the dawn of a new era in corporate accountability, since the judge has pressed for the names of the bank executives responsible for hiding the bonus payments.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-collins/the-smartest-guy-in-the-r_b_335417.html