Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin is suing Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER), accusing the firm of defrauding the city of Springfield, home of Homer Simpson, with subprime investments.
Merrill Lynch has already taken the unusual step of agreeing to buy back $13.9 million in subprime debt from the municipality at its original value after deciding that brokers had not been authorized by the city to buy the debt in the first place.
Merrill says it's puzzled by the suit, but Massachusetts is arguing that it told Merill to invest in "instruments that yielded more than Merrill's money market account as long as the products were triple-A rated by the major credit-rating agencies." It says that Merrill didn't warn Springfield about the risks of the CDOs.
Springfield officials -- and the secretary of state -- should take a look at the chart above. The idea that they could earn above-average returns with no risk defies the most basic principles of investing.
Maybe the lawsuit does have merit -- I have no idea. It appears that Springfield may have been misled about what it was getting itself into. But the fact is, Merrill lost big on subprime too because everyone forgot about the handy-dandy chart above: if it sounds too good to be true ...
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