which is a strong international branch. >> susie: you see merrill lynch as the driving force here? >> absolutely. with the traditional bank of america, it' goingto pride aery rich cash flow which merrill lynch will use to expand the capital market business internationally. >> susie: j.p. morgan and citi have a huge footprint in the international market. how hard is it for bank of america to compete and catch up. >> i think it's easy, because when you think what's happening to european banks, they're all shrinking and coming away from asia. in fact, many of the governments in europe have instructed their banks to duce tir presce in asia and other places around the world. the problem is if there's two banks there. they're strong in latin america, they're going to pull back dramatically, and there's no american banks really, other than citibank, j.p. morgan and goldman sachs that are competing. i think there's a vacuum, and i think bank of america through merrill lynch can come in successfully. >> susie: you've been very bullish on bank stocks, and you've been aggressively buyingank

merrill lynch, and the achievements -- maryland, and the achievements keep coming in.ignature plate came in the final seconds. she was catapulted into national attention. she may finalist and puts her in good company with one in four classmate. the coach said the next few days, a luxury that only 13 other teams have right now. knowing they have their spot locked up for the n.c.a.a. tournaments. the turks won a national title 10 years ago. -- terps won a a national title 10 years ago. >> he called me and gave me some words of advice. i do not speak much when he talks to me. he said it is great you did it for this city. i said you have been carrying the city long enough. he said it is good. make sure the guys have a little fun. there is nothing you can do to get ready. i give them a few days off. >> one more day with mild temperatures. we go to the 40's. no 30' s. >> good night, everybody. for the spender who needs a little help saving. for adding "& sons." for the dreamer, planning an early escape. for the mother of the bride. for whoever you are, for whatever you're tr

jason joins us now along with chris wolf who is the clehief investment office at merrill lynch as well. >> i think it is too much after good thing. market's up an awful lot. valuations are very mild. no two ways about that. but by the same token, i think it'll slow down meaningfully in the second half. i think there is a good chance you get a mild recession. we were talking about the physical cliff before. i know that it is widely anticipated and becoming a big problems but i think it is hard to avoid a significant slow down in the economy and earnings as we go into 2013. >> and chris, you're really, at the merrill lynch private bank, you see the high end, right? in terms of investors. so where are the client at the private bank putting their money right now? are they exhibiting what jason is talking about in terms of that fear of adversity? >> broadly speaking, relatively neutrally positioned. so i think client have been somewhat defensive since last october. been a little bit difficult frankly. we have played the dividend story which worked very well and looking at the credit side. i

after my second story, i started getting offers from goldman sachs, merrill lynch. i said, i wanted to do work that was meaningful to me, so ended up working in the prison system at rikers island. i know all of that was in so many ways possible because of the work that you did. i just want to say that i honor you, respect, love everything that you have done, all the roads that you have paid to allow me to do the best things that i have done. [applause] >> 44 years apart these two stories happens. clearly, life is not the same. so i went to ask you, miss coleman, what has changed since your time? and, bryonn, after that, what has not changed? when you listen to this story 44 years later for what you sat down and fought for, what has changed? >> well, that is a difficult question. i have to say, depending on what part of the country you come from -- when i have visited and montgomery, people ask, what did they get out of the civil rights movement? one thing. the street that i lived on, instead of calling it east dixie drive, they called it claudia colvin drive. [appla

tesoro jumpe4% after reivi an analyst upgrade to neutral from bank of america merrill lynch, expectingshares to benefit from the price differences between crude oil and gasoline-- in other words, the profit margin. fellow refiner valero was up as well, rising more than 7%. this is valero's highest price since late may. volume doubled on the rally. in commodities, we continued to see selling in the grain markets, where corn fell another 2%. wheat was down 3%. and that's tonight's "market focus." >> tom: three trends expected to continue until election day so says tonight's guest. we welcome kyle harrington. kyle, it's nice to see you. >> h are you? >> tom: i'm well. volatility is back for everybody, including investors, but dividend stocks, do you think theeral seover? >> i think with volatility comes opportunity, and yes, a lot of people have poured money into the dividend paying arena. but we think you feed to be more diligent about picking the appropriate securitys in that marketplace and/or the mutual funds that dignitary their ibvestment philosophy to dividend paying stocks. >> tom

on the same day merrill lynch was acquired by bank of america. again, basically saving the firm from potential collapse. on september 16th the next day aig, the largest multidimensional insurance company in the world had, if you remember, had been selling the credit insurance, came under enormous attack from the people demanding cash either through margin requirements or short term funding. the fed provide emergency liquidity assistance for aig and prevented the firm from failing. again, i'll again as well. washington mutual was one of the biggest thrift companies. a big provider of subprime mortgages, was closed by regulators later in september after parts of the company were taken off, jpmorgan acquired this company as well. october 3rd, wachovia, one in t united states, again, came under serious pressure and acquired by wells fargo, another large mortgage provider. these firms i'm talking about were among the top 10, 15 financial firms in the united states. similar things were happening in europe. not only small banks were being affected. that

morgan to buy or bear stearns when bank of america acquired country right of merrill lynch they're getting sued in all sorts of directions and these are lawsuits that by now are in this stage where they're moving forward because it's been several years and according to hedge fund manager investment banker i spoke with earlier he was saying that they're moving along it looks like in the case of m.b.i.a. which is going up against bank of america they're playing and the bank of america is going to end up possibly he predicts with this double digit billion dollar payout seven. i need to spank of america needs to restructure and go bankrupt so no i mean there's all these different when you're telling me that sounds like the stress stress stress excuse me are absolutely worthless but are there any real time or real world effects for citigroup for example i think that probably a lot of people were a little shocked or surprised in a certain way that they failed what happens as a group they just have this mark on their record well i mean maybe their share price will go down a little bit maybe inves

global leave the brothers the goldman sachs the merrill lynch why would anybody be afraid to give their money to. these are you know i just heard mayor bloomberg you know the billionaire bloomberg and billionaire's have direct lines to god because he said that even guard would have trouble straightening out what's going on at goldman sachs yeah god can't straighten out well let's make this really clear just for the record you know that money changer a long line about christ eating the money changers out of the temple the only time he becomes violet's guess what the money changers are in control yeah you're on just to set the record straight on our mayor bloomberg comment that even god couldn't run goldman right now without a lot of flak and do you think this is because i think that it's his job to support companies that are responsible for new york's tax base or do you think he has as you said is a billionaire a former investment banker really believes that goldman is doing god's work. well you know i don't know what he believes but it's a lot of crap and you know getting caught into th

. >> merrill lynch is right there in the top 10. -- maryland is right up there in the top 10. > as more women are opting to have babies that, rather than hospitals. details, straight ahead. >> live, local, latebreaking. your insta-weather-plus forecast. 11 news at 5 continues now. >> protesters are part of a group demanding change in annapolis. their goal, more midwives in maryland. current state law requires a midwife to be a registered nurse. >> a bill under consideration in annapolis with recognized certified professional midwives to legally practice in the state. we are following these developments. were quite a sight. moms are opting to have babies at home rather than the hospital. dozens from people in the august community -- amish community joined others to rally. >> the big deal is that we have a right to birth at home. to make it safer, it would be great to licensed professional midwives. we are using them anyway. i birthed my last two children at home. >> maryland law requires a midwife to be a licensed registered nurse. the measure establishes the safe board of midwives withi

employees post new york times piece and according to bloomberg an employee of bank of america's merrill lynch division said his team was told not to send copies of the articles to clients i don't know why that would matter i mean anyone can google but funny i wonder if they were told that about not to evey's new article in rolling stone which also came out yesterday about bank of america called to crooked to fail now failing marks from the press aside most of the big banks escaped them from the federal reserve this week fifteen of the nineteen biggest banks passed the fed stress test but neither the fed nor the banks appear to make the grade with our next guest christopher whalen senior managing director of tension capital partners author of inflated how money and debt built the american dream which you see right there and he's really going to break down for us what the real deal is behind these stress test so first i really appreciate you being on the show welcome to capital account mr whalen but closure absolute so you know first broadly because we've heard this report and you know since ea

of the cartel after the financial crisis we've lost pierce stearns we've lost lehman brothers merrill lynch is not what it once was morgan stanley is not what it's once was goldman sachs doesn't really have any competition and if you're a client who you know still wants the same kind of service from a goldman sachs that it once got you know there's really no place you can go to get it except goldman sachs i talk to any number of clients in the writing in my book who understand fully the kind of treatment that they're going to get from goldman sachs the understand fully that goldman sachs is going to compete with them they're going to goldman sachs is going to probably trade on their inside information they understand this but there's no choice there's nobody willing to do with goldman sachs does which ultimately frankly isn't potentially good for goldman sachs but it's very bad for the rest of us it's very bad for our capital market system it's very bad for capitalism and you know i've been writing about this for years and how they should change and nobody is listen to me now maybe this wil

there's a merrill lynch refining conference tomorrow that might see interesting things come out. keep your eye on that. >> next trade here. gm will introduce natural gas pickup trucks. the average price of cng is under 2 bucks. it is a solution to gasoline and could fuel the u.s. economy enough to try cng powered vehicles himself. steve mueller, the ceo of southwestern energy which produces 4% of the gas in the united states. pleasure to have you with us. >> it's great to be here. >> how many stations are there right now and what do you see as the potential there for opening more stations? >> well, we are part of three stations in arkansas. and there are 950 stations. only 400 are open to the public. >> only 400 are open to the public. i'm curious because as gm, most of these are going to be fleet vehicles. they have predictable routes. they know where they're going to be and they're able to fuel. what's it take to get a vehicle maker or get the consumer -- i mean, it's like the chicken or the egg. if there's demand there, people will buy the cars. but if they won't, the filling

former secretary treasury hank paulson had with bank of america before it completed its purchase of merrill lynch in 2009. the u.s. government gave b of a when ken lewis said he might abandon the deal because of merrill's losses. it's rare for be compelled to testify in a lawsuit. >>> and the s.e.c. is stepping up its probe of pre-ipo trading of shares of companies on the second isary market. the investigation involves the marketing of stock and hot internet companies like twitter and facebook and whether firms are fully disclosing risk to investors. the s.e.c. is negotiating a set is lment with shares and could bring action against felix investment. they got media attention after touting facebook and twitter's prospects to clients. >>> well, he's been in the top job since 2004. donahue, who oversaw the cme expansion with the cbo at nymex will be replaced by current president. cme chairman terry duffy will take on the president's role and duffy is the face of the company in front of congress and regulators in the wake of the mf global scandal. >> and prudential has met forecasts in the 2 billion

two years ago he quit his job on the trading floor at merrill lynch in london and became his own bossiously you trade kind of security and financial security for doing something which is potentially kind of a lot more exciting and challenging and that's kind of a balance that you have to -- that i have to make. >> reporter: david took a typically millennial gamble. he spotted an opportunity and ventured to south america where he launched his own company, intern latin america providing students with internships throughout the continent. in no time he was doing press for columbian tv. today it seems his gamble has paid off. david has received a $40,000 grant from startup chile, a government program. >> obviously the money is the thing that stands out, but the reality is that the connections environment and everything in startup chile for me is the benefit. >> reporter: taking the grant means this millennial has everything to prove. >> you do do something off kind of a normal path and you instinctively can feel a bit defensive and you really want the thing to be a success. >> reporter: a

the merrill lynches of the world with the backers of bats. all of the money was going to them.ney at all for internal purposes at bats. >> bob, thank you so much. we'll keep watching that. >>> we'll come back with the closing countdown. after the bell, take the pulse of the health care industry on the second anniversary of obamacare. the ceo of cleveland clinic will join us. [ donovan ] i hit a wall. and i thought "i can't do this, it's just too hard." then there was a moment. when i decided to find a way to keep going. go for olympic gold and go to college too. [ male announcer ] every day we help students earn their bachelor's or master's degree for tomorrow's careers. this is your moment. let nothing stand in your way. devry university, proud to support the education of our u.s. olympic team. cannot be contained. [ clang ] the all-new 2013 lexus gs. there's no going back. see your lexus dealer. like in a special ops mission? you'd spot movement, gather intelligence with minimal collateral damage. but rather than neutralizing enemies in their sleep, you'd be targeting stocks

i know big firms like bank of americas, merrill lynches.ant these clients anymore. is that hurting? you see them shunt these clients off because they're not elephants, so to speak. >> i don't think that's hurting so much as things like what happened with the goldman executive this week in that letter. that is so damaging to the -- to timmage that america is worth investing in. that wall street is not a bunch of crooks all out for themselves. that letter was so damaging this week. forget about goldman. we want people to believe in america. believe in investing in the united states. believe that there is a fair shake as you just said for the investors. that it's not a casino or some other cliche somebody throws out. that's hard to change people's minds when you get things like that letter. i didn't like what happened there. >> no, i didn't either. >> even though goldman, of course, does not really deal with those people. high net worth individuals. but large institutions and corporations. >> you know they're going to use that letter time and

and the big concern with market makers is that you can step in, in front of, say, merrill lynch buyinga million shares of ibm, and buy your own. so that when merrill buys the million shares, the stock goes up a little bit and u make some money. >> people couldn't figure out any other way for him to make money except if he was front- running. >> smith: people ran those, sort of, models and couldn't make money doing it? >> they couldn't make anywhere near the kind of returns that he did. especially in... when markets were falling. but he consistently made money every year. almost every month. >> smith: in boston, a team of risk analysts was puzzled, wondering what madoff was up to. >> there's always that potential, that one little potential that you've got a rocket scientist, an einstein here. and he's found some piece of information that's flowing to him proprietarily, because of the nature of his business of executing big trades. >> smith: in the late '90s, casey was working with harry markopolos, the now-famous whistleblower. casey and markopolos first heard about madoff's returns fro

christopher wolf, managing director at merrill lynch pink and investor group. thanks so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> let me kick this off with you here. do you think that charts are indicating that this market continues on the upside? >> i think it does. the overshooting we say last august was tremendous. and those sentiment measures tend to be quite contrary in nature. what it does tell us is that risk appetite stards the bid higher. the other part confirming though is credit access is improving. fundamentally that's the stuff that causes markets to go higher. if credit spreads are generally moving favorable. >> yet chris, markets seem to be moving directly on central bank action. we heard bernanke today and we all of a sudden have money come into stocks. >> i think there is a part of the market that wants it look the at bank of being with risk assets. any parcelling of the fed's words, i think gets a certain part of the market to react. it is really about profit margins. those have peeked and i think we would see our strong extension of profit gains

my next guest at bank of america merrill lynch global research said there are still signs of strength in the technologies. here's her take on the market. also joining me, jason with strategic research partners. good to see you both. thank you so much for joining us. >> thanks, maria. >> you still like tech? >> i love tech. i believe technology is entering a new secular bull market. technology from a technical perspective has been in a bear market for the past 11 years. it's been range-bound since 2001. we've cleared that level. so we think we're on path over the coming years to test those 2000 highs. we can see the nasdaq composite back up nearly 4,000 again. >> that would be something to talk about for sure. of course, the high is 5,000. but regardless, money has been moving into the sector. what is driving all the interest in tech these days? >> well, obviously there's been one company that's very dominant. but we think there are a lot of other things going on in tech. tech is very theme-based. cloud is a theme. internet is still a very big theme, within technology. and what we're s

also, you had the lehman brothers and bear stearns and merrill lynch. there was no statutory oversight of those firms. they had a voluntary agreement with the sec for oversight but there was not comprehensive oversight of those firms. as i will talk about, another one was the fannie mae and freddie mac which did have regulators. for reasons i will explain, that was inadequate. the regulatory structure have lots of holes in it. there were important firms that proved important that did not have good oversight. there are also, it even though the laws provided for regulation and supervision, it often was that done as well as it should have been. while this was true across a whole range of agencies and parts of the government, let me talk about the said. the fed made mistakes in supervision and regulation. i want to mention that one would be in our supervision of banks and bank holding companies. we did not press hard enough on this issue of measuring your risks. i mentioned before that it bought a bank did not have the best ability to lenders -- the capacit

merrill lynch is upgrading the stock and doubling the price target of 14%. both cabot and murphy oil are lower today. energy is one of the worst performing sectors on the day. oracle is down 2% after a downgrade at jeffries. let's get inside the market more with mr. pasani at the fyc. everybody is talking about the tight range, bob. >> the important thing is china, brian. we're up on the markets, but look carefully. you see the more defensive consumer oriented names and the pharmaceutical stocks on the onside, the risk on trade is not so much up. financials down, energy down, consumer discretionary. all of these are affected by the china news. i'll show you what's going on in the a and p sectors. all the big oil names are trade dou ing down 2 to 3%. all of this on the news about china and the trade deficits being wider than anticipated. same situation with some of the other big names in this group. for example, some of the exploration and production names in the oil services names, cabot, murphy, eog. when china starts weakening, global economy concerns migh

the to being is soaring, the company saying it hired stone key partners and merrill lynch as strategicisers and in a note john blackledge says that monster may be an attractive lbo candidate. he comes to us on the fast line. why do you think that? why is this a going private candidate? >> yes. thanks for having me. we think there are good candidate for a couple reasons. number one, they have most of the characteristics required for about. on including high free cash flow generation, low carb flow requirements and solid ebitda margins and bit of unstable top line growth and that could limit interest. most of the characteristics and pretty good entry point so the shares are down over 50% over the past two years, and trading at near all time low multiples at about five times 2012 ebitda, so the big question is do the lbo economics work and based on our base case analysis, we think they actually do. so we use our long-term estimates for monitor and use other assumptions, namely a 30% plus takeout premium that wouldy quit to $10 a share or seven times ebitda. >> is that a common multiple on

than a dozen of wall street's biggest bankers and brokers including david komansky, chairman of merrill lynch, sandy weill of travelers and sandy warner of jp morgan. one by one the firms each agreed to kick in more than $250 million to bail out long-term capital before its troubles sent shockwaves through the banking system. >> why did the fed step in, organize all the wall street banks, and kind of sponsor this bailout? because all of the wall street banks that enabled long-term capital to grow to this giant size, to have 100 to 1 leverage, by loaning them money. so when the treasury and the fed stepped in and bailed out, effectively, long-term capital and their lenders, their enablers, it was another big sign that the rules of the game had changed and that institutions were becoming too big to fail. fast forward. we go through 1% interest rates at the fed in the early 2000s, we go through the housing bubble and collapse. >> following the 2008 economic meltdown came the mother of all bailouts. >> good morning. secretary paulson, chairman bernanke and chairman cox have briefed leaders on cap

getting a downgrade from bank of america merrill lynch for green mountain.kin brands a little higher. better than expected earnings and getting an upgrade, and a nice little two-day pop. >>> greece's default impacting the markets in the final hours of trading here. dan greenhouse said the reaction in the equity market is overdone. he joins us along with steve from webb bush securities. good to have you on the program. thank you so much for joining us. dan, let me kick this off with you. tell me why you think this is an overreaction? >> it's a headline we all knew was coming. there was nobody under any illusions this was not a default in name only -- in anything but name. i was just a little surprised to see the market take it as poorly as it did. although admittedly as you noted, it bounced back fairly quickly. >> what do you think happens from here? obviously now this is a default. do you worry about the credibility of the other sovereigns in the region? >> well, i mean, it all depends on whether or not you honor the cds market. i think in the case of portu

bank of america, merrill lynch says they see technically the situation is bullish for oil. particularly with wti. they see it taking out last year's highs and taking on 2008 highs. remember, that was near $150 a barrel. wti they think will catch up with brent. gasoline today has been under pressure in part because of some profit taking really looking at the rest of the market. but what people continue to worry about is the retail gasoline picture. at oil price information service they say it's now been 39 straight days that we've seen national prices rise. we're now at $3.76, tyler. and that 411 record looks like it's in jeopardy. over to you. >> bertha, thank you very much. let's switch on the "power lunch" power surge and drill down on some of the stories driving the day. it looks like the republican establishment is beginning to line up behind mitt romney, now ahead of super tuesday's voting. our chief washington correspondent, john harwood, joins us. he's in the house with the latest developments on that and the nbc "the wall street journal" poll results, barbara bush,