Merrill now belongs to BofA for $44B. Approved by both boards.

How ‘bout this. My understanding is that the purchase is an all stock purchase. BAC sees the purchase as fair in terms of what its own share price might fall to when the falling dominoes reach their front door- if they sit tight and choose to do nothing. Smart play for them(while their stock still has some value) is to grow BAC large enough(by absorbing Merrill) so that the Feds are forced to step in and backstop them. The purchase price offered by BAC says a lot more about what BAC thinks its own ultimate share price may be worth if they were subsequently targeted by the shorts. Ultimately, increasing the likelihood of Fed backing reduces the threat posed by the shorts.

Wish I were wrong because this argument implies nothing more than pure desperation on BAC’s part.

Abbott, Hank’s bazooka isn’t very effective in a nuclear war battlespace, with nuclear implosions going off everywhere, 15 megaton Fannie here, 7 megaton Freddie there, 12 megaton Lehman here, 4 megaton Merrill over there, 25 megaton AIG coming right at us.

We need more than clown with a bazooka who can barely shoot straight. We need Volcker and James Baker, the best Fed/Treasury duo in history, and I’m no Republican.

As previously stated, there is only so much the Fed can do. We need a global response.

Matt Dubuque

Didn’t MER already sell their Bloomberg back to Bloomberg?

Merril were next.

That's were Hank is going to use the last shot of his bazooka.

Roubinni(?) is right. The is the meltdown of the secondary banking system.

Do BoA have ehough capital to bail out Merrill?

Have the Fed & Treasury both run out of money.

Japan & China may be closed tomorrow. But they will wake up on Tuesday.

FT article on Fuld arrogance.

Why did it take MSM until LEH is filing for Chapter 7/11/13 (?) to figure out that he is part of the problem? SHouldn;t it have been obvious after his arrogant comments after the fed opened the window to save LEH.

Whewre is NY Fed press release saying he is off the board?

MER has $100 billion per 10Q in deposits. Plus a $10B stake in Blackstone and $5B in bloomberg. $44 billion in level 3 assets and approx $30B in tangible equity. fully diluted shares approx $2B against the 995M used for common calc. If converted for all the preferred out, valuation will not be good for common holders.

Even worse, Thain goes on CNBC and says “as of this exact millisecond, we are well-capitalized.”

Great…thanks, John. Now, given you are CEO, do you mind telling us how well you are capitalized for, say, tomorrow, or maybe a month from now…you are capable of thinking beyond the current millisecond, aren’t you?

Maybe not.

I don’t disagree. Thain does not have ego in having Merrill survive as an independent entity, as Fuld did, and he is more conservative by temperament (I worked with him briefly early in our respective careers). But conversely, this also says that he thinks the odds of Merrill not making it are high enough that a sale is the best option. It may be that he realizes the that odds of a Roubini-esque run on brokerages is real. I had people months ago, long before Merrill in particular was a focus of concern, asking whether it was safe to keep their accounts there. That says that nervousness about the securities industry is widespread.