Mixed legal decisions for Bank of America

Yesterday the headlines about Bank of America came fast and furious. The Security and Exchange Comission came to a new settlement deal with Bank of America for $150 million; now it has to be approved by the same judge who threw out a much smaller penalty last year. Louise Story, business and finance reporter for The New York Times, helps us decode the legal actions.

In North Carolina, the company’s home state, the Attorney General settled for the significantly smaller sum of $1 million. But while those to parties seem to have struck a deal with the bank, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced he would sue both Bank of America and two of it’s former top ececutives for fraud. Some say Cuomo ? who is preparing a bid for Governor ? is playing politics. But Cuomo says the bank kept information from it’s lawyers to dupe shareholders into buying Merrill at an inflated price.