EDITORIAL: Did Bank of America bilk us out of billions?

Taxpayers deserve to know if Bank of America executives misled Washington to get billions of taxpayer dollars for their crisis-driven merger with Merrill Lynch. That's what Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and the inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program allege in a lawsuit filed Thursday. The litigation should provide a valuable window into the high-stakes deal.

Surely, the surly mood of voters who don't much like the bank bailouts makes this a popular case for prosecutors to pursue. Still, it would be nice to know if we were duped.

The merger in the fall of 2008 came at a pivotal moment for federal officials scrambling to avoid economic collapse. Cuomo said former chief executive Kenneth Lewis and former top financial officer Joseph Price misled shareholders by failing to disclose $16 billion in Merrill losses. And they allegedly duped federal regulators by threatening to walk away from the deal - when, according to the suit, they knew such an attempt would be futile - unless Washington kicked in $20 billion.

The bank has repaid the money. And both the Securities and Exchange Commission and North Carolina's attorney general announced last week that they've settled cases involving the merger. But the nagging question remains, were we bilked? hN