Bank of America

One of the key catalysts (aside from the retarded rumor that JPM would buy Bank of America) that prevented BAC's stock from dropping to a 5 handle yesterday, was JPM's credit upgrade of Bank of America (report here). Sure enough, the reacharound from BAC is as usual missing, with the response from the bank's banking analyst Guy Moszkowski, being to... downgrade JPM. And he did not stop there: he also cut, GS, MS, and C: in other words the entire TBTF brigade. Someone should probably explain to Guy that any sell off in BAC's peers will be doubly acute in the stock of BAC itself, which has now become the whipping boy for the shorts, and the proxy of all that is wrong in the US and European banking system. Then again, with the palpable sheer panic in the corridors of 1 Bryant Park, we doubt anyone at that bank has any idea what they are doing at all.

Early this morning, Henry Blodget penned a post titled "Here's Why Bank Of America's Stock Is Collapsing Again" in which he used Zero Hedge data among other, to determine that the capital shortfall for the bank is between $100 and $200 billion. It took BAC exactly 6 hours to retort. Below is the full statement.

And while stocks continue to blissfully exist in some parallel universe, the rout in financials has just entered overdrive, of particular note Bank of America, which has just passed it all time wides on the offered side. When the mid-market is north of 400, probably in about 2-3 hours, it may be time to cue the Lento from Chopin Piano Sonata, No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35.

About a month ago we penned an article titled (and asking) "Is Brian Lin The Next Incarnation Of Joe Cassano?" in which we sought to demonstrate just on what flimsy ground Bank of America has based its litigation reserve assumptions: a topic that since then has become the biggest sticking point in the BAC bull thesis. Considering that since then, Bank of America default risk has exploded by over 150% and the stock price has plummeted by half, at least some have grasped the severity of a situation when incremental flawed assumptions are magnified level after level, until we finally get what, as Manal Mehta terms it, is a Bank of America "Subprime CDO." Since this issue is extremely important to the future of the financial system (a bankruptcy of Bank of America would be hundreds of times more severe than Lehman's), below we present in visual, and thus easy to comprehend, format what we previously explaining in a narrative and which once again brings us to our question: will the man behind the BAC litigation reserve fraud be responsible for the next iteration of an AIG-type implosion?

We take this moment from your busy schedules to update you that the CDS of Bank of America has reached escape velocity and has now entered suborbital traffic. At 370 bps, which is where the CDS is trading as of this moment, it is only 30 away from the 400 it hit in March of 2009 when the world had to be bailed out by the Fed: a ploy which this time will not work since every central bank has already doubled down to the hilt. In other news, expect bashing of evil bloggers who indicate BofA default risk spikes to commence momentarily as obviously it is only they who are to blame for BAC's upcoming bailout.

Can we all just fast forward to Tim Geithner making apocalyptic threats if he doesn't get TARP 2 to bail out Bank of America (which in turn will "help" Rick Perry) please?

Following the recent surge in blue light special asset dispositions courtesy of Bank of America's precarious liquidity conditions, many have speculated that the bank will be forced to sell none other than Schrodinger's Goose: Merrill Lynch, which is at the same time both dead (pre bailout) and golden (due to some legacy reputation it has as a fabled Wall Street firm, now mostly based on intangible value). Nowhere else is this more evident than in the CDS spread between the two entities. After trading at close to convergence for about a year, the CDS levels between the two entities have seen a dramatic dispersion in recent days, soaring to over 50 bps (BAC CDS at 340, ML at 394). This is the widest the spread has been since early 2009 when the world was ending and everyone was buying whatever CDS they could get their hands on. The only comparable widening was in May 2010 when Europe blew up for the first time. So what should one do here? A divergence trade would mean that BAC is going to deteriorate so much it will have no choice but to dump Merrill, an outcome which will likely see both spreads blow out to 2008 wides, only to be followed by the need to nationalize CFC which will likely mean a collapse in Countrywide Home Loans spread (as we hypothesized two weeks ago). As if that was not confusing enough, the likely future of standalone BAC CDS post this event will likely be a tightening as the bank spins off its most toxic division, but then widens as the realization that America's biggest depository is no longer TBTF and spin offs are imminent. That... or the divergence collapses as the BAC blow out continues while investors speculate that upon its sale Merrill will have less risk than its old parent. In either case, keep an eye on this spread as it could be the canary in the coalmine for what BAC management plans to do w/r/t the Schrodinger Goose, CFC, and overall future business as a going concern expectations.

Should we be surprised, frightened, disgusted or simply say "we knew it", that in the informal mixer just after Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry spoke at a Politics and Eggs breakfast in Bedford, New Hampshire, an unknown gentlemen approaches a casual Perry like an Ian Flemming character, and proceeds to dead drop the following: "Bank of America... We will help you out"... and silently moves on. At least we know now who is funding what, and whose interests potential future president Perry will be paid to defend.

Will BAC be at $4 by November? We don't know. But someone just made a $2 million bet that this is precisely what will happen. Minutes ago, 54k $4 BAC November Puts were purchased at $0.37. The total price: $2 million. Will this event occur? Like we said, we don't know, but it sure looks far more realistic than Paulson's bet that BAC will trade at $30 by the end of the year.

After it was disclosed that Bank of America's firesale of its China Construction Bank is not going as well as expected, Moynihan's company, which was trounced by the market in the past week, continues to shed assets, this time offloading its $8.6 billion Canadian credit card portfolio to TD Bank for an unknown amount, a deal about which all BAC said was that the "transaction is expected to have a positive impact on the company's Tier 1 common and tangible common equity and the respective ratios." So it may also have a negative impact? That's encouraging. This news follows earlier disclosure that BAC has sold its UK and Ireland credit card business. Unfortunately for BAC shareholders, as long as the CFC bad bank is not nationalized by the Fed (sending its tracking CDS to parity with US default risk) such incremental asset sales will continue. Which also means that as BAC retains the non-performing assets, it is forced to sell its cash-generating trophies. At what point will there be nothing left of BAC but a husk that promises to everyone that going forward its Tier 1 ratio will be over 6% for real this time. And how long until the next Reps and Warranties lawsuit against BAC's mortgage handling practices?

A day after the US downgrade to AA+, Warren Buffett (who elsewhere continues his op-ed uber-campaign in hypocrisy by writing in the NYT that the government should "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich") said that in his book the US is AAAA. Amusingly, hours later S&P downgraded Berkshire to pari with the US. Judging by the record near surge in volatility in the ensuing days, the market was not too convinced with the octogenarian of Omaha's latest orations. What it was more convinced by, judging by market results, was the fact that Bank of America upgraded something totally different to an AAAA rating: gold, with a $2000 12 month target. To wit: "High commodity prices have now created a terms-of-trade shock for importers, feeding into current accounts, the financial sector and, ultimately, sovereign debt. How will these imbalances unwind? Physical gold is the ultimate collateral because it has no credit risk, so EM Central Banks have been diversifying their foreign exchange reserves into gold and other non-dollar, non-euro assets in recent quarters. Looking ahead, the deterioration in credit quality in Europe and the US coupled with an increased probability of QE3 means these pressures will continue. As a result, we revise our 12-month gold target to $2000/oz." Basically everything that Zero Hedge has been saying for about two and a half years now. Naturally, this coming from Bank of America, should set of contrarian call alarm bells everywhere. Regardless, here is BofA's Michael Widmer explaining his call, as well as the full upgrade report from BAC, which lately has far, far greater problems than getting its commodities call right or wrong.

...35 points wider: the highest since April 6, 2009. But fear not - credit has a reputation of being always wrong, while equities (especially short covering squeezes) are always right.

Bank of America is doing all it can to delay the inevitable equity issuance. Reuters has just broken the news that the bank is in active negotiations with Kuwait and Qatar sovereign wealth funds to sell its $17 billion China Construction Bank stake. There are several problems with this approach: first, the petrodollar sovereign wealth funds just lost over 20% of their AUM courtesy of the global equity rout and of the plunge in oil by more than 20% in less than 2 weeks; Second: everyone recalls what happened to Alwaleed when he bought his "Blue Light" citi stake; third: if BAC does indeed sell its CCB stake, it will leave it with zero disposable assets and will have no choice but to approach the equity market. Fourth, the fact that it needs this cash is validation of all the rumors that the bank's capitalization may be urgently strapped very soon, and that today's Berkowitz call was nothing but lies (in typical BAC style); last, since the final cash need when all is said and done, when all the litigation is over and when the NY AG is done with the bank, BAC will need far, far more cash than $17 billion. Which is why any BAC bounce in the AH session should be viewed very skeptically.

Ahead of today's Bank of America conference call organized by Fairholme's Bruce Berkowitz which has one purpose only: to rescue his losing investment in Bank of America, which is down almost 30% in the past week, below, courtesy of Manal Mehta, we present 6 prepared questions which we are confident will all get their due attention by Mr. Berkowitz because unless these core questions, which go to the heart of all investors fears about Bank of America, are not answered, and instead nothing but fluff is discussed, the whole exercise will lead to an even greater panic in Bank of America stock. And what would be more ironic than another 20% drop in the BAC stock during this call. Also, in addition to the questions below, we post the following, based on an analysis by Compass Point Research & Trading, which matches an analysis conducted independently by Zero Hedge, and according to which BofA could be forced to repurchase between $28.4 and $62.2 billion, or between $10.6 and $44.4 billion above the bank's current reserves, which would immediately impair the firm's Tier 1 Capital, trimming it by more than 50%, and forcing the company to immediately issue an equity follow on, which will likely lead to a stock price also about 50% lower.

BAC default risk at 265-270 bps as of this morning. About 30 tighter from yesterday's epic rout which saw the final bid/asl around 290/310, or well over 100 wider on the day. The longer BAC keeps mum, the worse this will get, and we expect the bleed wider to resume shortly, slowly at first, then very fast if no curve steepening QE3 Operation Twist is announced.