Merrill Lynch

In the past Zero Hedge had respect for Ten. Senator Bob Corker due to his opposition to the nationalization of the bankrupt automakers and making them yet another ward of the ever larger central-planning state. However, after today's hearing with Paul Volcker on the Prop trading ban, any respect we may have had for the Senator has promptly dissipated. While we understand that the pointless bashing of Volcker's proposal by Corker was predicated by his sizable lobby interest (over $21 million raised in the course of his career) and his talking points were undoubtedly a transliteration of a memorandum submitted by one of the Too Big To Fail banks that stand to experience substantial losses should the Volcker proposal pass, one line of argument in Corker's speech that is flagrantly flawed was Corker's naive rhetorical question whether there has been a single instance during the financial crisis where a commercial bank engaging in proprietary trading led directly to that institution failing or having to be bailed out by the taxpayer. Corker assumed the answer is no and kept pouncing on that answer. Well, Senator, you are wrong - meet Merrill Lynch, incidentally one of your biggest financial backers. Also, please meet Merrill's prop basis trade and its prop HVOL4 trade, which combined were the primary reason for the firm's $15 billion writedown in Q4 of 2008 and the subsequent bail out of the firm by Bank of America.

"As I’ve said before, the significance of the government’s actions last fall cannot be overstated, and we are grateful. We believe those efforts were critical to protecting the financial system and ensuring the continued viability of the American economy." - Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs

Thank you government indeed, because without you the "continued viability" of Goldman employees' bank accounts, who from 2000 to 2008, had an average compensation of $196,004, 145% more than the $79,962 peer average, may have well been in jeopardy. As it stands, 2009 will be the greatest pay year on record for Goldmanites, at an average $770,000 all in comp each

REIT stocks benefited mightily from Merrill Lynch's generosity earlier in the year, when the ML REIT team issued follow on equity offerings, followed by prompt upgrades to the stock, although not necessarily in that order. The bottom line - roughly 5% in underwriter fees on almost $20 billion worth of new equity issued. And while last week's REIT massively downsized IPOs were an indication that the top for REIT stocks has come, that has not prevented Ken Lewis' firm from continuing to profit handsomely from the next shoe to drop in real estate.

"We at the RateLab have long been fans of Ben Bernanke, as such, we are cheered that politics did not trump competence and Bernanke was officially nominated for another four year term as Chairman of the FED. What follows is a linear thought process of what this means for the markets." - Harley Bassman

Been a while since we heard from the most popular (and profitable) research (and trading) desk on Wall Street. Last night Merrill analyst Craig Schmidt went to town upgrading pretty much anything he could get his hands on. To wit, all from the last 24 hours:

Hey Regency, this is what happens when you don't tap ML as lead underwriter: you get the expected headline "Improving Balance Sheet" but no accompanying Upgrade or target price increase (in a note just released by Merrill Lynch/Bank of America which was somehow not a lead underwriter on this particular offering).

Hey Regency, this is what happens when you don't tap ML as lead underwriter: you get the expected headline "Improving Balance Sheet" but no accompanying Upgrade or target price increase (in a note just released by Merrill Lynch/Bank of America which was somehow not a lead underwriter on this particular offering).

Hey Regency, this is what happens when you don't tap ML as lead underwriter: you get the expected headline "Improving Balance Sheet" but no accompanying Upgrade or target price increase (in a note just released by Merrill Lynch/Bank of America which was somehow not a lead underwriter on this particular offering).