Bank of America's Freedom: At What Cost?

Still, even if you include that extra $5.75 billion in assessing JPMorgan's capital position, it would mean BofA would need to raise $6.7 billion at the very most in order to exit TARP, Wilson says.

"I doubt very much that Mr. Bove is correct that regulators want BofA to raise $45 billion in new capital above the $40 billion already raised after the stress test. There seems to be no basis for his analysis that seemingly spooked BofA investors on Monday," Wilson wrote in an email to TheStreet.com. Bove did not return a call placed to him late Tuesday.

Of course, just because a bank exits TARP doesn't mean it has enough capital to make regulators happy in the future. Monday's selloff appeared to be provoked by a view that regulators would require all big banks to beef up their capital ratios, whether they remain under the TARP, like BofA, Citigroup (C) and Wells Fargo (WFC), or have paid it back, like JPMorgan, US Bancorp (USB), BB&T (BBT) and Bank of New York (BK).

-- Written by Dan Freed in New York.

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