• Wall Street opened higher this morning after Wells Fargo predicted it would report a record $3 billion profit for the first quarter of 2009. [CNN, AP]
• You may soon be able to bail out America, too: The Obama administration is currently looking at ways to "give ordinary Americans a chance to profit from the bailouts that are being financed by their tax dollars." [NYT]
• Meredith Whitney has become as close to a household name as a banking industry analyst can get. But is she overhyped? [WSJ]

• The Treasury is expected to announce in the next few days that it will be extending bailout funds to a handful of life insurance companies. [WSJ]
• Brian Moynihan, who took over Merrill Lynch after John Thain was ousted, is emerging as a potential successor to Bank of America chief Ken Lewis. [WSJ]
• Not that Lewis necessarily needs to be replaced, at least according to Meredith Whitney, who (bizarrely) says Lewis has "done a great job." [BN]
• Blackstone, KKR, and Carlyle are in the running to acquire the mobile phone operations that Verizon Wireless is selling now that it's acquired Alltel. [BN]
• Looks like Jim Cramer has a new enemy. Nouriel Roubini is calling the CNBC star "a buffoon," and Cramer has since responded in kind, of course. [NYP]

• Financial fraudster Allen Stanford remains missing. He's also now under investigation for his possible involvement in laundering money for Mexican drug cartels. [ABC News, Dealbook]
• More on how Stanford lured in clients and what he was promising them. [BN]
• UBS will pay $780 million to settle claims it helped its clients evade taxes. It also agreed to disclose the names of some secret account holders. [BN, NYT]
• Oppenheimer & Co.'s famously bearish bank analyst, Meredith Whitney, is leaving to start her own firm. [NYP, Dealbreaker]
• The scandal over Citigroup's lavish perks continues. [BN]
• The Fed has downgraded its outlook for the economy this year. It's now forecasting an unemployment rate near 9% by the end of the year. [WSJ]
• Take a moment to reflect on how the cuts to bonuses are affecting people beyond Wall Street, won't you? [NYT]

• Dan Och's Och-Ziff reported a net loss during the second quarter; the stock has been cut in half since its IPO last year. [Reuters, NYP]