Surprise! Surprise! BAC Posts an abysmal Quarter

Submitted by: Francis Soyer
1/21/11

Surprise! Surprise! BAC Posts an abysmal Quarter
This morning BAC posted fourth (and highly sugar coated) earnings of .04 cents per share on expectations of .14 cents per share (NOT INCLUDING) the write downs for their earlier settlements with Fannie and Freddie Mac which brings a real number of (-.16) cents per share. And of course Brian Monyhan would have us believe that the worst is behind BAC in reference to the mosquito bite settlement mentioned above with Six other government agencies waiting in the wings with their settlement demands, PIMCO suing for ~$57 billion, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and of course class action lawsuits for fraud and other federal offense type crimes in a couple dozen states. The real risk to the balance sheet being if the DOJ can grow a pair and actually use the “book” and throw it at them, how many of them will serve time? My guess is that if the above were to happen, probably the entire senior management team and for the number of charges they would probably never see day light again for the rest of their natural lives. This is all regardless of Julian Assange’s magic trick supposadely waiting in the wings. From what I can gather Julian and his stalling he is also in need of growing a pair…
Today expect every main stream media outlet CNBC, FOX, Bloomberg you name it to play down all of the above Moral and Morale hazards to the outer most extremes that all is well and nothing to see here to pull in as many retail suckers as possible so major holders listed below can dump their shares as quietly and quickly as possible.

The above holders taking their que no doubt from Brian Moynihan and the smiley crew below who have been eagerly dumping since September 2010 into this quarter or the real person running BAC obviously Thomas K. Montag. Here is his bio:

Thomas K. Montag is president, Global Banking and Markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. He is based in New York and is a member of the bank’s executive management team. The Global Banking and Global Markets businesses focus on corporations, institutional investors, financial institutions and government entities. The businesses provide innovative services in M&A, equity and debt capital raising, lending, trading, risk management, research, and liquidity and payments management. Bank of America Merrill Lynch serves clients in more than 150 countries and has relationships with 99 percent of the U.S. Fortune 500 companies and nearly 96 percent of the Fortune Global 500.

Before that, Montag was with Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., (Wow, what are the chances of that? what a small world…) where he was co-head of the global securities business and a member of the company’s Management Committee and Equities/FICC Executive Committee.
During his 22 years with Goldman Sachs, Montag held a number of key executive roles. He was co-president of the firm's Japanese operations and co-head of Asian FICC and Equities, before becoming co-head of the global securities business. Earlier in his career, Montag ran the firm’s global derivatives business. He was named a partner at Goldman Sachs in 1994 and managing director in 1996. He began his career with management positions at the First National Bank of Chicago.

Insider Transactions Reported 4Q 2010

So my question would be, if better days are just around the corner as their commentary in the earnings call would suggest? Why should we buy if you’re not?