The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece today slamming government regulators for forcing Bank of America to acquire Merill Lynch. Before I get into my tirade, let me disclose that I own Bank of America stock, and have owned some of it for quite awhile.

I won't delve into the historical facts asserted by Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis or any counterclaims. Lewis' statements come primarily from his testimony as part of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's investigation into the acquisition of Merrill Lynch, and it seems likely to me that Lewis has no reason to lie.

Here's the crux of the story for me:

Evaluating the policy of Messrs. Bernanke and Paulson on their own terms, this transaction fundamentally increased systemic risk. In order to save a Wall Street brokerage, the feds spread the risk to one of the country's largest deposit-taking banks. If they were convinced that Merrill had to be saved, then they should have made the public case for it. And the first obligation of due diligence is to make sure that their Merrill "rescuer" of choice -- BofA -- had the capacity to bear the losses. Instead they transplanted the Merrill risk to BofA shareholders, the bank's depositors and the taxpayers who ensure those deposits. And then they had to bail out BofA too.

For some reason, it continues to amaze, and somewhat baffle, me government regulators can be so audacious. With one side of their mouth, they blame banks for the various financial problems we are facing, saying that lack of transparency, greed and ego caused the economic meltdown. And then they exhibit those same exact attributes to "fix" the problem.