SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Bank of America Corp. needs more than $80 billion in new common equity capital to support the huge amount of assets on its balance sheet, an analyst said Tuesday.

The bank probably needs to maintain a tangible equity ratio of 6% to 9%, he said. "It would take over $80 billion of new common equity to reach even the low end of the range, and we believe Bank of America simply is not generating sufficient capital internally in this environment to put a dent in this size capital hole."

B. of A. needs more than $80 billion

Seems extreme...

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Many commentators have suggestions for Barack Obama on what should be his first meeting at the White House. Here is mine: Mr. Obama and his economic team should convene the 300 leading bank presidents in the East Room and the president should say to each one of them something like this:

“Ladies and gentlemen, this crisis started with you, the bankers, engaging in reckless practices, and it will only end when we clean up your mess and start afresh. The banking system is the heart of our economy. It pumps blood to our industrial muscles, and right now it’s not pumping. We all know that in the past six months you’ve gone from one extreme to another. You’ve gone from lending money to anyone who could fog up a knife to now treating all potential borrowers, no matter how healthy, as bankrupt until proven innocent. And, therefore, you’re either not lending to them or lending under such onerous terms that the economy can’t get any liftoff. No amount of stimulus will work without a healthy banking system.

“So here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to unclog the arteries. My banking experts have analyzed each of your balance sheets. You will tell us if we’re right. Those of you who are insolvent, we will nationalize and shut down. We will auction off your viable assets and will hold the toxic ones in a government reconstruction fund and sell them later when the market rebounds. Those of you who are weak will be merged. And those of you who are strong will receive added capital for your balance sheets, after you write down all your remaining toxic waste. I am not going to continue rewarding the losers and dimwits amongst you with handouts.”

NYTimes Op-Ed: Time for (Self) Shock Therapy by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Jim Rogers, chairman of Singapore- based Rogers Holdings, said investors should be “worried” about the U.S. dollar, and recommended selling government bonds and buying raw materials, China stocks and the yen.

“If I were you, I would be worried about the U.S. dollar,” said Rogers, 66, in a speech at the Asia Financial Forum in Hong Kong today. “The Americans are printing U.S. dollars. The Americans are going to do whatever they can to revive their economy, even if it means destroying the U.S. dollar.”

Holding government bonds is a “big mistake” and is going to “end badly,” he said. Investors should favor agriculture, power generation and China shares if they want to make money, said Rogers, who correctly predicted the start of the commodities rally in 1999 and has written books including ‘A Bull in China: Investing Profitably in the World’s Greatest Market.’

Jim Rogers Says Worried About Dollar, Favors China

an. 19 (Bloomberg) -- A rally that sent U.S. Treasuries to their best year since 1995 is coming to an end, South Korea’s National Pension Service, the country’s biggest investor, said.

“It’s time to sell U.S. Treasuries,” said Kim, who took over as head of investments at the start of the year. “The stimulus plan may cause inflation. The U.S. will raise the benchmark interest rate.”

Investors in South Korea cut their holdings of U.S. debt to $28.6 billion in November, less than half of what they owned in 2006, based on Treasury Department data.

China, the largest foreign owner of Treasuries, increased its stake to a record $681.9 billion in November.

‘Time to Sell’ Treasuries, Biggest Korean Fund Says

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says the U.S. is engaged in an "economic Pearl Harbor."

In an interview that aired Sunday on "Dateline NBC," the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said the nation's economic situation is not as bad at World War II or the Great Depression, but it's still pretty severe.

Buffett said Americans are in a cycle of fear, "which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We'll break out of it. It takes time."

Buffett says US in 'economic Pearl Harbor'

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- It has been a year of record misery: the largest bankruptcy, bank failure and Ponzi scheme in U.S. history; $720 billion in writedowns and losses by financial institutions; $30.1 trillion in market valuation wiped out.

“The wholesale funding model lost its credibility,” said David Hendler, senior analyst at New York-based CreditSights Inc. “That started the semi-nationalization of funding in the financial markets. It’s a real chink in the armor of capitalism as supposedly the best process for allocating capital. The government is now deciding who gets access to capital.”

The price tag has been transcendent, too. Global stock markets lost about half of their value in 2008, or $30.1 trillion dollars. In the U.S., $7.2 trillion of shareholder value was wiped off the books, as the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 39 percent through Dec. 30 and the Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 42 percent.

Journal of a Plague Year: Faith in Markets Cracks Under Losses

RealMoney contributor Dan Dicker says the old investment bank model is dead so the Goldman we know doesn't need to exist.

R.I.P., Goldman Sachs

Bet you haven't seen this on a bumper sticker lately: "Save the derivatives market."

Hardly catchy. Especially since almost no one actually knows what a derivative is. And it sure goes against the emotions of the crowd right now.

Along with Christopher Cox, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission and of a Wall Street culture of greed, derivatives are the villains in the current collapse of the global financial system.

The global market for derivatives has a notional value of $455 trillion. The market for a single kind of derivative called credit default swaps (CDS) comes to $62 trillion. A single company, the recently rescued AIG, was counterparty to $422 billion in derivatives. That's just a tad below the low-end estimate for the government buy-up plan as a whole. For a single company.

Another devil in the financial crisis

Even as stocks ended five days of losses with a surprising recovery on Wednesday, officials began moving to defuse another potential time bomb in the markets: the weakened condition of two large insurance companies that have guaranteed buyers against losses on more than $1 trillion of bonds.

Next on the Worry List: Shaky Insurers of Bonds - New York Times

The five largest Wall Street banks doled out a record $39 billion in bonuses last year, according to data collected by the Bloomberg news service. After driving hundreds of thousands of families into foreclosure, causing a financial crisis affecting hundreds of millions, and pushing the US and world economies closer to recession, it appears Wall Street is rewarding itself for a job well done.

All in all, Wall Street wrote off more than $90 billion in bad debt for the year, and the five largest banks saw their profits drop more than 60 percent. Three of the five firms posted losses in the fourth quarter.

Amid record losses, Wall Street awarded itself $39 billion