Cuomo sues UBS for Auction Rate Securities deception

The New York Times reports that Andrew Cuomo, New York's attorney general, has sued UBS AG (NYSE: UBS). He charges UBS of deceptive sales practices. Massachusetts beat him to that punch when it sued UBS for deception after revealing e-mails indicating that UBS decided it would be better to foist the toxic waste on its naive wealth management customers rather than taking the hit of writing down the holdings on their books.

I began following the Auction Rate Securities (ARS) market -- those bond-like securities whose rates used to reset in weekly auctions -- back in February when those auctions failed. Since then 5,341 comments have appeared from people whose hard-earned cash is frozen in what was marketed to them as safe, money-market-like securities with slightly higher yields.

I credit Cuomo with adding a useful detail to the brief against UBS. He points out that UBS senior executives were selling $21 million worth of ARSs as its brokers were desperately pushing the toxic waste onto their individual customers. This reminds me of the same kind of deception we saw during the dot-com era when an analyst, Henry Blodget, wrote bullish reports about companies that he trashed in e-mails to his colleagues.