It's one of the peculiar realities of business: two parties canspend years aiming for one another's jugular vein and end-uppartnering when they find cooperation is in the best interest.

That's the way it appears the litigation soap opera between MBIAand Bank of America has ended after they resolved their differencesand announced a settlement, ending four years of finger-pointingand personal attacks.

When the housing market imploded in 2008, bringing down the restof the economy, MBIA, along with FGIC and Ambac, found themselvesfacing huge losses from insuring credit default swaps (CDS). TheCDS covered bundles of mortgages that investors traded asprofitable investment vehicles with little risk—so they thought.The players in these investments assumed that mortgage underwriterswere writing loans to people who could afford them, and if a couplewent bad the bulk of good ones would keep the bundle healthy. Butthe greed mongers underwrote a lot of bad loans. No one knew howextensive the problem was until the economy tanked.

Clinging for life, MBIA came up with an ingenious solution forsurvival: separate its troubled portfolio of CDS from its healthymunicipal bond business. That set off rounds of litigation as banksfeared losing the security of the reserves insuring the bonds andMBIA, feeling hoodwinked, sought to end its insurance contracts,pretty much saying, if we insured “A” rated risks—why did so manyblow-up in our face?

Over the past four years, MBIA accused the banks of manipulatingNew York State legislators to conduct an investigation of MBIA;the banks accused MBIA of lying to regulators about its financialposition to get a favorable ruling on the split; Bank of Americaattempted to gain influence over MBIA through the purchase of the insurer'ssenior notes, and attorneys for the two sides got into somenasty squabbles in court questioning one another'sintegrity.

Finally, we have a settlement. Bank of America paid MBIA $1.7billion and the two agreed to commutation of $7.4 billion ininsurance policies that covered CDS. Bank of America also extendeda $500 million loan to MBIA.

There's the irony, after four years of litigation MBIA gets whatit wanted and then becomes a Bank of America customer. MBIA comesout as a winner, and Bank of America gets a new client.

It just so happens that as this went on last week the CEO ofEnron, Jeffery Skilling, was in the news seeking to have hissentence reduced. There was that period around 2000 when Skillingand others were producing corporate malfeasance every day in thenews. A few executives went to jail then, but the hit to theeconomy wasn't as hard. The question for today's malefactors iswhen will we see those who almost sank the rest of us held toaccount?