Looks like they're cutting a deal:
U.S. regulators may try to extract $20 billion of penalties in a settlement with banks that serviced flawed loans, two people briefed on the talks said this week.
More...
If that $20 billion figure is accurate, they (BofA and Wells Fargo) should consider themselves fortunate. And their legal fees don't sound all that bad either:
Wells Fargo said the high end of estimated litigation losses could be $1.2 billion beyond the reserve already set aside. Bank of America’s losses may be as much as $1.5 billion.
It could be a lot worse. Especially if a certain document dump forces them to hire even more lawyers.
And speaking of those documents, I found it interesting when it was recently leaked that Julian Assange was apparently trying to downplay the significance of the Bank of America documents he's sitting on:
Mark Hosenball of Reuters reports that three people "familiar with the WikiLeaks leaders private discussions about the material" say that Julian Assange has privately said he does not know if the documents really contain big news or scandal.
This news came at almost precisely the same moment it was emerging that BofA had hired HB Gary to "take down" Wikileaks.
I just find the timing odd. Why was Assange trying to downplay the BofA documents at the very same time that the BofA/HBGary story was hitting the wires? Why is BofA suddenly apparently very eager to cut a deal with the feds? Just what does Wikileaks have on them?