“Calls to split up big banks are growing, even from big-bank architect Sandy Weill, a former Citi chairman, but in reality, any such downsizing will take a long time and there’s no need for “draconian” measures to speed up the process, says star Wall Street analyst Meredith Whitney.

Earlier Wednesday, Weill said big banks need to be broken up due to the systemic risk their potential collapses would pose on taxpayers and depositors.

Splitting up big banks may happen, but over time, as the banks must find a way to keep the more profitable areas of their businesses, which in reality, aren’t all that big.”

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“With President Barack Obama claiming the government builds success, not individuals, Mitt Romney should look north to a story Obama would rather Americans didn’t notice. Canada is outperforming the U.S. on every economic front and they’re doing it with policies Republicans say they’d like to implement.

For the inside scoop I interviewed Tony Clement..”

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Don’t get to giddy as we have been down this road before. Any number of talking heads can kill this excitement with one negative comment.

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In Play ,

On the Wires 

“Earlier today, Citi’s Chief Economist Willem Buiter published a research note in which he raised the odds of a Greek exit from the eurozone to 90 percent.

Morgan Stanley’s Global Cross-Asset Strategy Team led by Greg Peters is also worried about a Greek exit from the euro.  They’re also concerned about Spain, which is getting worse and is also much bigger than Greece.

From their latest note to clients:”

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“China may refrain from stepping up its monetary stimulus or increasing spending because measures now in place are sufficient to support growth, the International Monetary Fund’s top official in the nation said.

Authorities will probably maintain the “status quo” after already shifting their monetary stance to a “more neutral or accommodating one” and may forgo expanding this year’s budget, Il Houng Lee, 54, the IMF’s senior resident representative in China, said in an interview yesterday in the fund’s Beijing office.”

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COMMENTARY BY CHARLES HURT via WashingtonTimes.com 

It is all so perfectly fitting that in the wake of a murderous rampage in which 70 people are shot —12 fatally, including a 6-year-old girl — and countless families are sacked with unspeakable grief, you would take the time to share with us your feelings.

Because, really, at this moment, all that matters to most of us is what a bunch of smutty purveyors of violent fantasy, half-rate actors and an industry of sick narcissism is feeling at this moment.

Director Christopher Nolan, speaking on behalf of the cast and crew of “The Dark Knight Rises,” you told us how much you love going to the movies and how they are “one of the great American art forms.”

You are devastated that such an “innocent and hopeful place” — here you are talking about the movie theaters that play your twisted movies — would be violated in such an “unbearably savage” way. I mean, really, who could think up such monstrous hatred and nihilistic violence? Umm, have you watched any of your own movies lately?

And, in the selfless modesty that is the hallmark of an Academy Awards ceremony, you tell us that your “feelings” about the massacre are so deeply profound that the mere words of the English language built up over hundreds of years are simply not up to the task of describing them. Wow. You do have a gift for fantasy.

But the real clue that you remain shrouded in guilt-free delusion is when you mention the “senseless tragedy that has befallen the entire Aurora community.”

Senseless? Really? If by “senseless” you mean carried out almost precisely from the scripts of your own movies, then, sure, it was “senseless.”

As for you, Sean Penn, you paragon of endless moralizing, we would like to thank you, too, for underwriting last week’s ultra-violence and real-life carnage at the movie theater. One of the last scenes that 6-year-old saw in her precious life was a trailer for your movie.

In the final clip of a trailer filled with orgiastic bloodshed, you have some classy “actors” with machine guns unload from behind a movie screen into a crowd seated in a theater, watching a film. Ring a bell, Sean? Sound familiar?

I realize how busy you are, so loudly and obnoxiously jet-setting around to save the world, but do you have time to think about what you have done here? What your life amounts to at this moment?

No, you did not pull the trigger in this case. You did not don the gas mask. But you were the inspiration, and you are the architects.

Your celebrations of diabolical mayhem and pornographic violence prey on the fantasies of sick, fragile minds. You insulated them from the painful reality of bloodshed. You have inspired mass murder. You are the Osama bin Laden of this travesty.

This, of course, is all legal and has made you a fabulous fortune. But, never forget, this is who you are. It is what you do. This is your legacy.

When you die, your gravestones should read: Here lie men who created such horrific, meaningless violence in such realistic scenes that a sicko carried it out for real and shot 70 people, killing 12, including a 6-year-old girl.

KEEP READING 

Any Westerner visiting China leaves in awe of its new airports, buildings and hotels. Its cities bustle and its people hustle.

As head of the Consumer Electronics Association, I travel to China at least annually. But after several awe-inspiring trips, I returned from China this month less in awe. China may have “jumped the shark,” veering from amazing to troubled.

For one, the building boom appears to be over. There are still plenty high-rise construction sites marked by cranes, but many, if not most, of the projects showed no evidence of any activity. They were simply stopped.

In one area, we drove past scores of quiet high-rise sites in various phases of completion. We were told that in this one small and amazingly beautiful coastline area, construction had begun and was halted on 100,000 housing units. Chinese banks are holding some serious uncollectible debt.

While this may have been an extreme example, the reversal in construction stems in large part from the government’s new rules aimed at cutting speculation by restricting second home ownership. Buyers must put down 50 percent in cash, and interest rates are less than favorable.

Of course, this may just be a temporary blip. It’s been estimated that 400 million people are moving from China’s villages to its cities. Indeed, there are more than 171 Chinese cities that now have more than one million people, compared to only nine cities in the U.S.

You wouldn’t worry about a construction slowdown if you read the China’s recently released Five Year Plan. By 2015, high-speed rail will cover 74,000 miles, up 30 percent. Another 64 airports are planned by 2020, adding to China’s 180-airport inventory. And 41 nuclear plants are planned or are under construction. Ambitious.

Read more:

“After its brutal initial public offering, the social networking company must show Wall Street it is serious about making money.

FORTUNE — Facebook will face a tough audience when the company reports its first quarter earnings on Thursday. After a theatrically disastrous initial public offering in May, the Menlo Park, Calif-based social network must now show Wall Street it can continue to grow both users and revenue at a brisk pace and has the discipline to deliver strong profits quarter after quarter to keep investors committed.

So far, it’s been a rough ride. The stock has been trading at around $29 this week — a 24% drop from the price at which it closed on its first day — as investors question the strength of its advertising business and fret over how the company will make money on mobile platforms. Here are three things to keep in mind for Thursday’s 5PM EST earnings call:”

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“For a second there we almost got the impression Bob Janjuah was getting a tad bullish, if even just in the short-term. This just released note removes any fears we may have had the frmr RBS strtgst, and current Nomura Fixed Income Contributing Strategist may have lost his touch.

Bob’s World: You have been warned!”

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“In January 2008, then-FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair faced criticism for being too strict on financial regulation. By October, her critics complained that she hadn’t done enough to fix the financial crisis.

Such is the plight of financial regulators these days but Bair, who now chairs the Systemic Risk Council, a private sector group focused on monitoring and encouraging regulatory reform of the U.S. financial industry, says that is no reason for the “timidity” she sees in the regulatory response to the crisis.”

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“WASHINGTON—Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will warn Congress Wednesday that the euro-zone debt crisis and the political divide over fiscal policy in Washington pose threats to the U.S. economic recovery, issuing a pointed warning of the twin risks he believes are holding back growth.

Mr. Geithner will warn the House Financial Services Committee, according to a draft of his testimony reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, that “a severe crisis in Europe would necessarily have very substantial, adverse effects on the United States.” He will say the continuing fight in Europe over how to deal with the region’s debt problems is hurting global growth and exacerbating a slowdown.”
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“Former Citigroup Chairman & CEO Sanford I. Weill, the man who invented the financial supermarket, called for the breakup of big banks in an interview on CNBC Wednesday.

Getty Images

“What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that’s not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that’s not too big to fail,” Weill told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

He added: “If they want to hedge what they’re doing with their investments, let them do it in a way that’s going to be market-to-market so they’re never going to be hit.”

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Gapping up 

RVBD +23.7%, ACOM +15.7%, USNA +14.3%, VHC +10%, ALTR +9.6%,

TPX +8.1%, IRBT +7.7%, PNRA +6.4%, UIS +5.8%, ARMH +5.1%,

SDRL +5.1%, JNPR +3.3%, MT +3.2%, OEH +2.9%, NOK +2.3%, TEF +2.3%,

HBC +1.8%, BRCM +1.6%, CMG +52.3%, RF +1.5%,  VHC +10%, SDRL +5.1%

Gapping down 

NFLX -18.8%, TRIP -14.9%, BWLD -11.3%, RCKY -8.1%, RFMD -6.5%,

IGT -6.1%, CMLP -5.3%, AAPL -4.8%, QCOR -3.2%, EXPE -2.7%, DB -2.7%,

PCLN -2.3%, SWKS -2.1%, NUAN -2.1%, WFT -1.6%,  UPS -0.6%, CMLP -5.3%,

NVAX -5.2%, GSK 1.2%, AZN -1.1%,

In Play ,

On the Wires 

“PIMCO’s CEO Mohamed El-Erian is calling it the GGIRC: the great global interest rate convergence.

In a new piece for CNBC.com, El-Erian describes GGIRC as a world “whereby interest rates steadily converge to zero in many countries around the world.”

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The gloom rests upon ‘if’ the countries do not take a larger share of debt burden. In the end it is more than likely that this will happen.

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“Eastern European economies will expand at half last year’s pace in 2012 as fallout from the euro-area debt crisis spreads, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said.

The 29 east European and central Asian countries where the EBRD invests will grow 2.7 percent in 2012, down from 5 percent last year, the London-based bank forecast today in an e-mailed report, cutting a May projection for 3.2 percent growth. Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Tunisia, where the bank is expanding, will grow 2.1 percent, 0.1 percentage point less than seen before.”

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CNBC reports this article is what had the markets come roaring back late this afternoon.

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A great look at the market over time courtesy of Ritholtz @ The Big Picture.

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