Banks are likely to shed another 150,000 layoffs in 2012 —according to leading banking analyst Dick Bove of Rochdale Securities.  Increasing regulatory constraints, higher capital requirements, rock-bottom interest rates,  the elimination of proprietary trading and other investment vehicles are all impediments to the industry and have forced Wall Street institutions to pare back sharply on staff, pushing out as many as 230,000 finance professionals this year alone.  Bove believes the fallout will continue. "This, however, is just the beginning," he said. "There are hundreds of additional rules that must be written that will further increase the cost of financial services and reduce the industry’s revenues." Bove also cautioned against targeting banks by politicians and protestors. Big banks have come under scrutiny in large part because of their role in the subprime mortgage collapse, in which financial institutions backed home loans to unqualified borrowers who then defaulted on their mortgages and caused a global economic panic. "What no one has figured out as yet is that the big government cannon is harming more than the big banks, evil though they may be," Bove, said in a note to clients. "Small banks are hurt far more than the large ones due to the various restrictions on rate and balance sheet size plus government price fixing." Those troubles will carom from the industry into the broader economy, he said. That's a point not understood by the various forces that Bove contends are aligned against the banking industry: President Obama, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Congress, regulators and even the media. "It has not been understood that people who are fired cannot buy products. They cannot pay taxes. They receive government benefits like unemployment checks instead," Bove said. "New York’s governor cannot tax incomes that do not exist." Bove adds a smaller banking industry will mean a weaker jobs picture and hamper U.S. competitiveness on a global level.   [cnbc  12/16/11]