Justice League Wall Street

Bankers seem to be emerging finally from the shadow of 2008, putting litigation behind them and, hopefully, moving forward to a better future. This week BoA settled for $16.65 billion with the DOJ with respect to cases involving fraud against federal and state authorities. It was announced Friday that Goldman would pay $3.15 billion for similar claims.  A London School of Economics study indicates that, overall, Wall Street banks paid about $243 billion in claims between 2008 and 2012. The details are shown here in a sort of League Table of Doom.

Those aggregate payouts are the equivalent of 10 years worth of Venture Capital funding. As we have mentioned before, similar quantities of claims are now pending, primarily against Trustees. So that would be equivalent to another decade’s worth of venture capital.  Bond markets are big (and that is why we focus on them here at DealVector).

Still, it feels as if we are closer to dawn than midnight. The big dealing banks are stronger in relative terms than have been in the past. Here’s hoping they can assume the role of Superfriends to the economy from here on out.