Merrill

If I win the bet, i will have lost big elsewhere. So will we all.

Based on its debt maturation cycle I expect we’ll see an Italian default within the next six months. Indeed, no matter what happens with Greece, Italy will make sure that the EU in its current form no longer exists within the next year.

Like two children bickering over spilled ink... Listen fellas, there's only one way out of this, and that way is not through the ACME Print-O-Matic 2000 (Euro edition). It didn't work for Japan, it didn't work for the US, and it ain't gonna work for the EU!

The bank that never, ever needs capital, but will dilute the living daylights out of anyone to get it, and will sell all of its actually valuable assets as soon as a buyer materializes, has just gone ahead and proven its critics right yet again. Several minutes ago Brian Moynihan's rotting carcass of toxic Countrwide Financial mortgages, which has some negligible banking businesses on the side, just announced it would sell about 10.4 billion common shares of China Construction Bank Corp through private transactions with a group of investors. The purposes of the follow up CCB disposition - to pump about $2.9 billion in additional Tier 1 common capital at Bank of America. And with this the easy disposition targets are gone. Next up: just how will Bank of America be able to spin off Merrill. Have fun with all those CDS successor issues. And once that phase is over, the debate over just how Bank of America will spin the hundreds of billions of legacy CFC contingency liabilities off into an "asbestos" trust will resume.

All you need to read.

Consuelo Mack has just released a long overdue interview with David Rosenberg, in which the former Merrill strategist is allowed to speak for 27 whole minutes without commercial interruptions of manic depressive momentum chasers cutting off his every sentence, demanding he tell them what stocks he is buying right this second! In addition to the traditional now discussion of America's depression (see attached extended walkthru by Rosie), probably the more interesting part in the interview starts at minute 11 when the conversation shifts to MF Global which to Rosie is a canary in the coalmine, and is merely the 2011 version of Bear Stearns as there is "never just one cockroach." Then the Q&A shifts to Europe, the ECB's next steps and the future of the Eurozone and Germany in particular. Mack concludes with some thoughts on what bond rates indicate about the future of the word, how the 7% output gap as a % of GDP will drive deflation (although in a vacuum: there is little accounting for the Fed's and global central bank kneejerk reaction), and how the corporation is now more powerful than the sovereign, courtesy of more pristine corporate balance sheets than those of actual countries, all of which are on the verge. Will the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks take over when Europe and the US finally tumble? Oh, and like a good M. Night Shyamalan movie, there is a surprising twist ending.

Let's assume that the statement "its never different this time" is there for a reason, and is fundamentally correct. In which case this time is just like some other previous time. Furthermore, considering that the underlying reasons for the Great Financial Crisis of 2007 never went away but merely saw their symptoms masked by trillions of dollars in monetary and fiscal stimulus, it is safe to say that what is currently happening in Europe, accompanied by financial failures in the US, is merely a continuation of that epic collapse that started all the way back in 2007 with the failure of New Century. And since history always rhymes, and all too often it is easy to ignore the big picture of the past, we would like to remind readers of precisely what the key events in the first great collapse were, transpose these to the present, and attempt to predict the future. The questions are: who is next, when, where and how. To help us with the answer, here is a brief history of two timelines...

The great sage Albert Einstein suggested that repeating something and expecting a different outcome is “insanity.”  The NY Fed is repeating its reliance on primary dealers to be transparent and accurate and to do so voluntarily.

It seems like history is accelerating. Momentous events have been occurring regularly since 2007. Our political and financial leaders are blindsided on a daily basis by each new crisis. The majority of the American public continues to be apathetic, willfully ignorant, and constantly absorbed by their array of electronic gadgets and mindless drivel spewed at them by media conglomerates. Rather than think critically, most Americans allow left wing and right wing mainstream media to formulate their opinions for them through their propaganda and misinformation operations. Linear thinkers, who make up the majority of the political, social, media and financial elite in this country, believe the world progresses and moves ever forward. In reality, the world operates in a cyclical fashion, with generations throughout history reacting to events in a predictable manner based upon their stage in life. The reason the world has turned so chaotic, angry and fraught with danger since 2007 is because we have entered another Fourth Turning. Strauss & Howe have been able to document a fourfold cycle of generational types and recurring mood eras in American history back 500 years. They have also documented the same phenomenon in other countries.

Here is video outlining precisely how MF would collapse due to Fed policy, made at the beginning of the year! This wasn't hard to see coming. How many of you are willing to bet that MF Global will NOT be the Lehman of 2011? Let me rundown a few hard, painful and accurate observations that you guys who fell for that rough ass bear market rally might have overlooked.

More from our Bank Exec friend, this time on MF Global after we tried to lay blame on Rubin, Thain and Corzine for blowing up their firms: "MF Global. They named that company right. You probably didn't see it first hand but Lehman, Bear and Merrill were doing the dumbest real estate deals "ever" in the run up to the implosion. Every real estate veteran saw it, and while AIG's CDS exposure gets airplay, bad real estate lending is at the center of the disaster. So, Merrill was toast before Thain showed up. He was just the funeral director. Citi (with its 14 off balance sheet SIV's @ $1 trillion) was an abomination in progress before Rubin arrived, the Enron of banking and each and every officer and board member should go to jail. But they won't because they are all too powerful and very politically connected."

There is no shortage of hatred for the biggest banks. Indeed, the Occupy Wall Street movement is leading a national revolution against these byzantine, powerful Goliaths for the economic devastation they have caused. This makes it difficult to choose the worst of the bunch. That said, a strong case can be made that Bank of America deserves the title of the nation's most despised bank. Here are ten reasons to take your money out of Bank of America - and park it at a credit union or community bank near you. (And yes, that may be near impossible if you have a mortgage with them, as refinancing away from any big bank nowadays is a nightmare.)

We have good reason to be waiting for Lehman—our current situation is simple and stark: Sovereign nations and individual citizens are over-indebted—to the point where they cannot pay back what they owe. We all know that this overindebtedness at the sovereign and individual level is going to end, and end badly: Worse than 2008.  So along with everyone else, I’ve been waiting for Lehman—and fruitlessly trying to guess which will be the Lehman-like event this time around. Will it be the bankruptcy of Dexia? BofA? UniCredit or SocGen or one of the Spanish banks? Will it be a war in the Middle East? Bad producer index numbers from China? A fart by a day-trader in Uzbekistan?

When will Lehman arrive!?!?

But lately, my thinking has changed: Like the characters in Godot, I think that we’re waiting in vain. The Lehman-like event will never arrive because it won’t be allowed to arrive. So this miserable slog we are going through will continue—indefinitely. (Yeah, I know: Sucks to be us.)

I can honestly say that this is probably the hardest hitting (literally) expose on Bank of America Lynch[ing this] CountryWide you will ever come across. Here we illustrate exactly what BofA snuck into America

s savings accounts. It ain't just CDS and it ain't pretty!

We are far enough away from the onset of the Great Recession that another down-wave in the depression (or a new recession if you go by NBER) is either here or due soon.  It may not be a severe downturn, as housing and autos would be falling from first- or second-floor windows in that case, but it would be occurring on the backdrop of a weakened structure, and thus the financial effects could be more severe than the economic effects (which could be severe or mild). Here is what you need to do.