Bank of America is accelerating cost-cutting plans, and may eliminate another 16,000 jobs by the end of the year, The Wall Street Journal reports. Most of the cuts will focus on the company's retail operations, as firm closes branches and shrinks its mortgage operation. Project New BAC, as the bank's restructuring efforts are called, is designed to save $8 billion annually by 2015.

Federal lawmakers are weighing means to prevent cities from using eminent domain to seize mortgages. A proposed law would prevent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from buying mortgages in localities that attempt to ease borrowers' woes by seizing mortgages, according to Bloomberg. Chicago and San Bernardino County have considered eminent domain as an approach to the foreclosure crisis.

The Department of Justice is asking for more time to complete its investigation of banks implicated in efforts to manipulate interbank-lending rates, according to The Journal. While the statute of limitations on the potential Libor-rigging violations is 5 years, banks generally prefer authorities not rush investigations. DoJ's move comes after the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission made similar requests this summer.

Libor is hardly the only financial benchmark vulnerable to manipulation, according to a paper from an international group of regulators.

The chances that Greece will leave the eurozone have increased now that the region is better prepared for a possible Grexit, Citigroup economists say, according to Business Insider.

Doubleline founder Jeffrey Gundlach was the victim of a $10 million robbery, Business Insider says, citing the Los Angeles Times.

The head of payment processing for Full Tilt Poker pleaded guilty and faces as much as 15 years in prison for misleading banks into accepting online gambling transactions.

At Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith got fooled by a fake Newsweek article in which Niall Ferguson was purported to wonder, "Was Mussolini Right?"

My name is Arch Crawford, and I'll be your financial astrologer.

Andrew Ross Sorkin says the Facebook executive most responsible for the company's failed initial public offering has largely escaped blame.

A former partner at Dewey & LaBoeuf is suing Citigroup, charging that the lender helped hide the law firm's financial problems.

An Argentinean judge issues an arrest warrant for Credit Suisse exec David Mulford, who's wanted for failing to testify in a probe of the country's 2001 debt default.

Multinationals such as American Express and Spanish bank BBVA are dabbling in venture capital, according to The Times.

Jim Cramer gets better ratings when Mad Money re-airs at 3 a.m. The Post figures drunken traders may be the target audience.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, speaking at a closed session of the E.U. parliament, suggested that central bank may start buying government debt maturing inside of three years.

Spain's bank bailout fund will inject $5.7 billion in Bankia.

The French government stepped in to bail out Paris-based Credit Immobilier de France over the weekend; now it says the deal can work without costing the taxpayer.

U.S. firms are planning for a Grexit, according to The Times: "Bank of America Merrill Lynch has looked into filling trucks with cash and sending them over the Greek border so clients can continue to pay local employees and suppliers in the event money is unavailable."

UBS, which says it lost $356 million due to Nasdaq's technical difficulties, has said it will sue. Citadel, on the other hand, filed a letter with the SEC saying that Nasdaq's proposed remedies are fair.

In the wake of Knight Capital’s $440 million loss due to a rogue trading algorithm earlier this month, two exchange industry executives are talking up a fat finger provision, allowing regulators to roll back the tape and undo trades in exceptional cases.

The Malkins want to form a REIT to take the Empire State Building public. Some crotchety old New Yorkers are holding up the deal. Bloomberg's David M. Levitt goes long.

Angela Merkel and François Hollande are getting ready to play stern parents to Antonis Samaras as the Greek prime minister begins a trip through Berlin and Paris to ask the European powers for more time to reach austerity goals. Tough talk aside, Retuers suggests Europe may have little choice but to give Greece "a bit of air to breathe."

Will Greece leave the euro before it can be kicked out? Does it matter?

Amid the back-and-forth over Peter Thiel’s sale of 72 percent of his Facebook holdings, Bloomberg asks around, and reports such sudden divestiture to be unusual.

Best Buy founder Richard Schulze, who is working on a bid to take the electronics retailer private, and the Best Buy board are negotiating again over whether and under what conditions to allow Mr. Schulze to conduct due diligence on Best Buy's books.

The Fed's Open Market Committee hinted at further easing in meeting minutes released yesterday, and markets rallied.

It doesn't matter how loud you shout about the fiscal cliff (which, the Congressional Budget Office says could lead to a "significant recession" if lawmakers don't act). The news always seems to get buried.

Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Mary L. Schapiro wanted to bring changes to the way money market funds are regulated, forcing the funds to hold cash against dark days, or let the funds fluctuate with the market. It's not going to happen, at least not at the moment.

Whale-slayer Boaz Weinstein is struggling to keep his head above water, reports The New York Post. Mr. Weinstein's Saba Capital iMaster Fund is only up 0.62 percent for the year, even after profiting in trades against the JPMorgan trader known as the London Whale.

General Motors sold out of G.M.A.C., its financing arm in, in 2005, borrowed $17.2 billion from the Treasury at the height of the financial crisis, changed its name to Ally Financial (and yes, sponsored Adam Davidson's Marketplace). Now Ally is spinning off Residential Capital, its mortgage lender, through bankruptcy proceedings, and Steven M. Davidoff sees Ally's debt to the government as hindering risk-taking.

The Wall Street Journal sees the Obama administration's involvement in Carlyle Group's deal to buy a Pennsylvania refinery at odds with the Obama campaign's attacks on the private equity industry.

Regions Financial, the Alabama-based lender that repaid $3.5 billion in bailout funds to the U.S. Treasury in April, is the subject of a grand jury investigation, The Journal reports. The rub: the lender's relationship with a recruiting firm that wined and dined Regions' execs and borrowed money from the bank.

The Journal also sees some buy-out firms struggling to raise funds, Wilbur Ross among them.

A Vietnamese banker was arrested, and markets swooned.

The first recipient of the Security and Exchange Commission's whistle-blower program received $50,000, or one-third of the funds recovered due to the individual's case. The payee stands to gain more as the SEC continues to recover funds.

The Justice Department and Federal Reserve are probing Royal Bank of Scotland for possibly violating sanctions against Iran, sources told Bloomberg. Long-arm-of-the-Lawsky and the New York State Department of Financial Services are staying out of this one, apparently.

With a lull in the Libor action, Iran sanctions becoming old hat, Reuters digs into the other, other British banking scandal: interest rate swaps. Lenders such as RBS and HSBC have provisioned funds against lawsuits charging banks mis-sold swaps to small businesses in the run-up to the financial crisis.

Simple Sandy: Former Citigroup chairman and CEO Sandy Weill went on CNBC yesterday and said we'd all be better off if banks split off their investment banking units. That was a little like Joe Camel swearing off cigarettes, a friend quipped, for Mr. Weill was the driving force behind the creation of the "supermarket" banking model in the 1980s and 1990s. But the banking boss has been simplifying his entire life lately, selling off his penthouse at 15 Central Park West last year, and spending more time in California. "I think that simpler is better. But my life is still not very simple," Mr. Weill told CNBC's Robert Frank.

Drab banking: "There's no sexiness, there's no fun, there's no intellectual intrigue" in banking these days, a former Credit Suisse and Bear Stearns trader tells Bloomberg.

Geithner didn't know...About the "specific conversation" in which a Barclays employ told the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that the British lender wasn't posting an honest Libor rate as early as 2008. Mr. Geithner, who headed the New York Fed at the time and is now Treasury secretary, told the House Financial Services Committee yesterday that he thought the FRBNY took appropriate action by sharing its Libor-related concerns with U.S. and U.K. regulators.

New odds on Grexit: Citigroup economists hung a 90 percent chance on Greece leaving the euro in the next 12 to 18 months.

Pain in Spain: Banco Santander, Spain's largest lender, said profit fell 93 percent in the second quarter as the bank set aside more cash to offset soured loans.

Libor-ated: Employees at Lloyds Banking Group have received subpoenas as parts of investigations by regulators across the globe into the manipulation of Libor and other interbank lending rates, the company said yesterday in announcing second-quarter earnings. Until those investigations have run their course, the bank doesn't see a need to set aside funds to settle civil lawsuits arising from the matter, executive George Culmer told investors on a conference call.

Look out below: Zynga plummeted 37 percent in trading after the close of New York markets yesterday, as the firm announced disappointing second-quarter results. Key Zynga partner Facebook announces earnings today.

Tax hole: The official in charge of multinational effort to tax offshore accounts questioned a report released last week that rich individuals are hiding as much as $32 trillion. "I was wondering where the equivalent of 450 Bill Gates are hiding from everyone," OECD official Pascal Saint-Armans told Reuters.

European leaders promised a more integrated banking system at the G-20 meeting in Mexico City yesterday, listing common banking oversight and depositor guarantees among future steps to be considered.

Asset managers like Legg Mason are preparing for worst case news out of Europe.

Greek savers aren't the only ones stuffing banknotes under their mattresses; Reuters reports that institutional investors are increasingly holding cash.

("If you wrapped up all the $100 bills in circulation, it would form a cube about 74 feet per side...")

Spain paid 2 percentage points more to borrow on 12-month bonds yesterday than it did one month ago.

If all that paints too rosy a picture, talk to Mark J. Grant.

For a little optimist, CNBC brings you Mark Mobius.

Jon Stewart interviews the drachma.

Your tab... Goldman Sachs advanced Rajat Gupta nearly $30 million to cover legal expenses, according to The New York Times, salt in the wounds after a) the former McKinsey & Co. chief executive and Goldman director passed Goldman secrets to hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, according to the jury and b) Mr. Gupta's defense team took an adversarial approach to the parade of Goldman execs appearing at the witness stand (one attorney for Mr. Gupta called Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein "cold and callous," according to The Times). Anyway, Goldman has been picking up the tab because firm bylaws require the bank to pay the legal fees of executives and board directors; Mr. Gupta signed a pretrial agreement stipulating that he would pay his own legal bills if convicted.

Hide the whale: Bruno Iksil, the JPMorgan trader known as the London Whale, sometimes resisted sharing the details of his trading positions with superiors,The Wall Street Journalreports: "Mr. Iksil once confided to the colleague that when he wanted to avoid questions from supervisors about his trades, he sometimes would start discussing a mathematical term, equation or other technical jargon, to confuse and end the conversation."

Jamie Dimon is scheduled to testify before the "harsher and crazier" House of Representatives today.

BofA to divest? Swiss private bank Julius Baer is in talks to acquire Bank of America's non-U.S. wealth management unit, which manages about $90 billion, and which Reuters says could be worth about $2 billion.

Short-term fix: Nine months and $15 million later, Michael Francis is out as president of J.C. Penney.

The Greek elections do little to ease problems facing Spain or Italy.

French Socialists once a majority in parliamentary elections, giving President François Hollande a supportive legislature.

The Citigroup analysts who put the chances of a Grexit at 50 to 75 percent are sticking with those odds, despite the results of yesterday's elections.

Lion's share: Morgan Stanley sought to be the "sole driver" of the Facebook IPO, positioning itself to collect the bulk of fees—and criticism for the company's plummeting share price in the weeks after the offering. We've heard that line before, of course, but The Wall Street Journal puts Morgan Stanley banker Michael Grimes back through the paces.

Post-Facebook, investment bankers may need to replace "oversubscribed" as a line for marketing offerings.

HARP helping banks: A federal program that allows struggling homeowners to refinance mortgages at prevailing low interest rates may be helping banks more than borrowers, according to a Nomura research report. Borrowers who participate in HARP are compelled to refinance with existing lenders, and banks are taking advantage by charging above-market interest rates, The Wall Street Journal reports. The upshot: HARP may save homeowners $2.5 to $5 billion this year, while banks stand to gain $12 billion in additional revenues through the program.

Gupta's fate: Rajat Gupta was found guilty of three counts of fraud and one count of conspiracy at his insider trading trial Friday, and barring a successful appeal, the fate of the former McKinsey & Co. CEO now rests with Judge Jed Rakoff. That might not be the worst thing, as Judge Rakoff has shown some leniency in sentencing insider-trading convicts. Mr. Gupta's sentencing hearing is scheduled for Oct. 18.

The Times reports that jurors were conflicted, with some shedding tears during the reading of the verdict.

Paperboy:The New York Times looks at Warren Buffett's affinity for newspapers, and hears nary a discouraging word about the legendary investor's management of The Buffalo News, which Mr. Buffett acquired in 1977.

Pop quiz: If you're thinking about day trading, The Big Picture has a quick quiz for you.

Reporter passes: "Market-moving" reporter Dan Dorfman died at 80.

It was only this weekend, of course, that a plan to rescue the Spanish banking system with $125 billion in European funds, news that soothed investors for about five minutes before markets turned back again Spain's government bonds.

With the possibility that the Greek elections Sunday could install the anti-bailout Syriza party in control of the government, a G20 official told Reuters that "the central banks are preparing for coordinated action to provide liquidity":

Wall Street stocks jumped sharply on the news, with the S&P 500 and the Dow Industrials both up more than 1 percent. The euro added to gains and U.S. government debt prices fell, boosting yields.

Separately on Thursday, British finance minister George Osborne said the government and the Bank of England will act together with new monetary policy tools to tackle tightening credit and financial market conditions triggered by the euro zone crisis.

Not that said actions would likely be the last, Reuters points out:

A senior U.S. official cautioned that the Greek election will not provide "the definitive signal on what happens next" in the euro zone debt crisis."

The downgrade didn't prevent Spain's Amancio Ortega, founder of retail giant Inditex, from becoming Europe's richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.

“We have no sense that European partners will follow this tactic of blackmail heard from some quarters and stop funding,” Alex Tsipras, leader of Greece's anti-bailout Syriza party told Bloomberg Television. Rather, Mr. Tsipras thinks that Greece can break the terms of the European rescue agreement signed by a previous Greek government without being forced to exit the eurozone.

"If the Greeks do not meet the commitments they have made, do not meet their financial commitments, do not repay loans, Slovakia will demand that Greece leaves the euro zone," Slovakia Prime Minister Robert Fico said at a news conference today.

Credit Agricole's Grexit contingency plans include walking away from Greek assets, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Germany beat the Netherlands 2-1 on goals by Mario Gomez.

Softballs: Jamie Dimon got in and out of Senate Banking Committee hearings without being pressed too hard on JPMorgan's recent trading losses, and Heidi Moore says it comes down to one chief reason: No amount of regulation can prevent banks from making stupid decisions.

Mr. Dimon's recent troubles may have created space for another Wall Street boss to claim the title of America's Least Hated Banker.

Emerging market: Large institutional investors and the Wall Street firms that bank them are talking about creating an electronic marketplace for corporate bonds, The Journal reports. BlackRock and Goldman Sachs are among firms that have begun building their own platforms.

Lawyer's suit: Former Dewey & Labouef partner Henry Bunsow is suing the law firm, which filed for bankruptcy on May 28, charging that the firm encouraged partners to make capital investments in the firm in what amounted to a pyramid scheme. "Defendants used partner capital investments as a form of revenue to enrich themselves and to hide the dire condition of the firm from the public,” read Mr. Bunsow's complaint.

Tear-jerker:Wily defense counsel Gary P. Naftalis drew tears from client Rajat Gupta, the former McKinsey & Co. founder accused of passing corporate secrets to Galleon Group's Raj Rajaratnam, during closing remarks of the insider-trading trial at the U.S. Southern District courthouse in downtown Manhattan. “Whatever you do here will mark whatever future he [Gupta] has left,” Mr. Naftalis said. “To believe the argument of the defense team, you’d have to believe Mr. Gupta is one of the unluckiest men in the world,” prosecutor Reed Brodsky told the jury.

An ill-timed acquisition has made Credit Agricole the foreign bank with the most to lose in the Greek crisis.

Despite Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's assertion that the matter of his nation's enfeebled banks was "resolved," yields on Spain's government bonds rose, and Fitch Ratings downgraded 18 Spanish lenders.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti is on deck.

Breakdown: Jamie Dimon testifies this morning at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on JPMorgan's recent trading losses. As we noted last night, Mr. Dimon's prepared remarks are dry stuff. Committee chair Sen. Tim Johnson, a South Dakota democrat, will ask “How can a bank take on ‘far too much risk’ if the point of the trades was to reduce risk in the first place?” according to Bloomberg, and Sen. Richard Shelby, the top-ranking Republican on the committee, will focus on specific nature of the trades. Other potential questions: How were executives in the chief investment office paid? And how involved was Mr. Dimon in the decision to change the way the CIO calculated its VaR, or the amount of money the office could lose on a given day?

Smith Barney no more: Morgan Stanley intends to drop the Smith Barney name from its retail brokerage, chief executive office James Gorman said yesterday. Morgan Stanley acquired a stake in Smith Barney, the firm that made "money the old fashioned way,"  in 2009, and plans to complete the outright purchase of Citigroup's remaining shares in the years to come. AsThe New York Timespoints out, Smith Barney joins Shearson, E.F. Hutton and Salomon Brothers among former Sandy Weill acquisitions to wind up on the scrap heap.

Moody's man: The Wall Street Journal has a go at profiling Gregory Winans Bauer, Moody's global head of banking, the man behind the potential ratings downgrades stalking the world's leading lenders. What did they find? "An avid yachtsman" leading 170 banking analysts neither as well known or highly paid as the bankers whose dreams they are currently haunting.

Gupta grilled: Rajat Gupta's daughter Geetanjali testified in Judge Jed Rakoff's courtroom yesterday. Would Ms. Gupta do anything for her father, a prosecutor asked on cross-examination? “I would do anything for my father, but I would not lie, though, on the stand,” she said.

Paper money: Syria released new Russian-printed banknotes into circulation, four Damascus-based bankers told Reuters.

Wipeout: The financial crisis knocked 39 percent off median household wealth, the Federal Reserve said yesterday, as the collapse of the housing market pushed net worth to 1992 levels.

Settled: The Treasury Department reached a $619 million settlement with ING Bank after the government charged that the Dutch lender breached U.S. sanctions against countries such as Iran, Libya and Cuba.