http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=avvPo059cPsQ&refer=news The powers that be may yet save this market with their management of individual disasters and the news resulting from those events.
Your title for this thread is misleading. You do realize that they are considering a provisional writedown. In layman terms, that only means that they might consider taking a paper loss in anticipation of potential future losses. It doesn't mean they actually are taking a 6.5 billion loss.
Which btw...if they do do this writedown, it will be a screaming buy as every specuator that knows nothing about balance sheets will be shorting the house on BAC. Bring on the lemmings!