The Bank of America (BAC) travesty of corporate governance continues to grow increasingly tragicomic.

A quick recap: Bank of America's board of directors took way too long to kick CEO Ken Lewis to the curb and now it can't pick a successor because of infighting. Meanwhile, the board and the company's executives -- including those who are being considered for the CEO job -- have made such a mess of the whole thing that no one who isn't already part of the company will consider taking the job.

Charlie Gasparino of CNBC reports:

High productivity all helped fuel the rally today, partly in hopes that this leads to more hiring in 2010. The lowest number of new jobless claims since January helped as well as the DJIA was floating right around the 10,000 mark at the closing bell.

Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 10,005.96 +203.82 (2.08%)
S&P 500 1,066.63 +20.13 (1.92%)
Nasdaq 2,105.32 +49.80 (2.42%)

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After taking way too long to send CEO Ken Lewis packing, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) is now taking way too long to find a successor.

Charlie Gasparino reports that "The board of directors of Bank of America is likely to delay a much-anticipated announcement of a replacement for CEO Ken Lewis until next week, an effort people close to the bank say, to conduct a wide-ranging search for the bank's next leader and appease some investors and analysts who want an experienced outsider to replace Lewis."

The problem is that Bank of America is having trouble finding qualified outside candidates -- because few sane people have a desire to walk into the mess that the current regime at the company has created.

In wealth management circles, Robert McCann is a pro. After all, he ran Merrill Lynch's financial advisory business -- known as the "thundering herd" -- which is now part of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC).

However, he left in January and wanted another opportunity. But there was a problem: he had a noncompete. So, with the help of skillful attorneys, he was able to reach some type of settlement.

If you've become comfortable with the current state of the housing market ... don't. Economists at Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and Bank of America's Merrill Lynch (NYSE: BAC) say there's still plenty of risk in the housing market.

Alec Phillips, the head of Goldman's Washington office, said, "The risk of renewed home price declines remains significant." His "working assumption" is a drop of between 5% and 10% by the middle of next year.

The rally in the stock market and the return to profitability for some of the top banks has been hailed as a sign of a turnaround -- and proof that the interventionist financial policies of the past year worked.

But not so fast. In reality, a huge chunk of the profits banks are earnings can be directly attributed to their ability to borrow money at artificially low interest rates.

According to a report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that below market interest rates offered by The Federal Reserve accounted for 41% of JPMorgan's profits. At Bank of America, the number was 47%.

Analyst upgrades:

• RBC Capital upgraded Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) to Outperform from Sector Perform and said the company has attractive franchise value and earnings power, and is nearing the start of a credit driven earnings recovery. The firm raised its target to $22 from $19.
• Oppenheimer assumed coverage of Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and upgraded shares to Outperform from Perform. The firm expects Amazon's revenue growth to re-accelerate over the next several quarters, making consensus estimates too conservative. Opco set a $130 price target on the stock.
• Barclays upgraded Ford (NYSE: F) to Equal Weight from Underweight and believes the company will report Q3 results above the Street. The firm raised its Q3 EPS estimate to 7 cents from 16 cents, vs. consensus of 21 cents, and its price target to $8 from $7.
• Charles River Labs (NYSE: CRL) was upgraded to Neutral from Sell at Goldman.
• Briggs & Stratton (NYSE: BGG) was upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Baird.
• Sealed Air (NYSE: SEE) was upgraded to Equal Weight from Underweight at Barclays.

Here are some highlights from last week's earnings coverage from BloggingStocks:

• Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT) higher Q3 earnings topped expectations but revenue was in line.
• Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) posted better-than-expected Q3 results, but shares sold off.
• Allegheny Technologies Inc. (NYSE: ATI) was downgraded on concerns about its Q4 guidance.
• Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) shares fell after it posted a deeper-than-expected quarterly loss.
• Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) fell victim to profit taking despite reporting better-than-expected earnings.
• CSX Corp. (NYSE: CSX) better-than-expected Q3 earnings sent shares higher, despite a decline in revenue.

I don't think anyone could have had a positive reaction to Bank of America's (NYSE: BAC) third-quarter report, which was released on Friday. According to Bloomberg, management lost $1 billion in the past three months. Big ouch on that one. The financial institution bled 26 cents per diluted share. No earnings beat here, either. Wall Street sent shares down 4.6% by the end of yesterday's trading session.

The year-ago period was a happier time. Back then, Bank of America was rolling in the dough, posting a profit of 15 cents per share. What a difference 12 months makes. Looking at the nine-month record perhaps gives a small amount of comfort to shareholders. The company made 39 cents per diluted share. Of course, that doesn't sit too well next to the $1.09 per diluted share booked in the comparable period. But at least it's not a loss, know what I mean?

Tuesday morning greeted us with earnings from banking behemoth JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM). The company said it earned $3.59 billion and that it nearly doubled the amount of money it saved for loan losses in the third quarter.

Breaking the results down into per-share earnings, JPM trounced the consensus estimate. The bank earned 82 cents per share, nearly double the expected 49 cents per share. Quarterly revenue increased to $26.62 billion from last year's same-quarter revenue of $14.74 billion.

Goldman Sachs upgraded the banking sector last week, and this coming week we'll get a chance to see whether Goldman and other big banks reporting third quarter results will live up to the expectations of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) looks set to be this week's earnings game winner. Analysts expect this dividend-paying company to report a third-quarter profit of $4.24 per share, which is 57.3% higher than in the same period of last year. Revenue for the period that ended in September is expected to be $11.0 billion. So far, the full-year forecast is for $17.74 per share on $44.6 billion.

Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) traded above $50 a share in December 2006, but the international financial crisis drove the sector to extreme lows, and BAC fell to below $3 in March.

With the crisis abated and recent management changes to take effect at the end of this year, BAC has picked up positive research opinions from many analysts.

Technically the stock has made a solid advance along its bullish support line and the 50-day moving average.

When selecting which stocks to buy, ratings from agencies like Standard & Poor's can be useful in creating a balanced portfolio.

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The Finger Family, based in Houston, owns more than 1 million shares of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and has risen to express its opinion about who should be the company's new CEO: someone from outside the company.

In a letter to the company's shareholders filed with the SEC, the Finger family raised a number of fantastic points about why promoting from within is a horrible, horrible idea. In a way, it's so obviously not the way to go that it's a tribute to the board's incompetence that this discussion even has to be had. But here are a few of the Finger family's points:

Starting your own business? Need some extra space for your needlepoint habit? You're in luck ... office space comes cheap these days. In fact, rent for office space is sliding lower at the fastest rate since 1995. In the third quarter, office rents dropped 8.5% on a year-over-year basis.

Falling prices typically go hand in hand with falling demand and in fact, vacancies are on the rise as layoffs increase. New York-based real-estate research firm Reis says the office vacancy rate has hit a five-year high of 16.5%. Last quarter, tenants returned 19.6 million square feet of commercial rental space to their landlords.