Bank of America has agreed to pay a record 16.7 billion dollars to US authorities for misleading investors about the quality of loans it sold. The loans were sold by countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch before Bank of America bought them in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis. The associate attorney general said no institution is either too big or too powerful to escape punishment. The settlement will cut the bank's third-quarter profits by 5.3 billion dollars.