Judge Jed Rakoff taps into nation's outrage over economic crisis

The outspoken federal jurist has condemned not only big banks for their financial misdeeds but also their regulators.

By Nathaniel Popper
LA Times
April 10, 2010

Reporting from New York

The economic crisis has brought out the populist in many politicians and others. Among the more unlikely ones may be a silver-bearded federal judge who has wasted no chance to tell the country's biggest banks what he thinks about how they operate.

When Bank of America Corp. was trying to settle civil charges over its conduct in its purchase of Merrill Lynch, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff wrote that the bank's executives had led what "could have been a bank-destroying disaster if the U.S. taxpayers had not saved the day."

Addressing how the firm pays its top people, the judge spoke in February of "the incredibly bloated compensation of too many executives in too many American companies."

In another case, Rakoff called JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s handling of a major client improper at the very least, "if not a downright sham."

(More here.)