Three to watch: Berkshire, global growth jitters, BofA

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Some notes from around the markets as the week kicks off:
--The bear claims a prominent victim: The Class B shares of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Corp. slumped to $3,895 apiece at the end of last week, extending their loss to 21.9% from their record high of $4,985 in December. So Berkshire joins the Dow Jones industrial average, the Nasdaq composite and some other key indexes in bear-market territory, meaning a loss of at least 20% from the recent high.
Because of the breadth of its business and stock holdings, Berkshire is considered to be a mutual fund, of sorts -- albeit one heavily weighted with insurance businesses. The Class B shares have been favorites of small investors who wanted to buy into the Buffett legend but couldn’t afford the Class A shares, which sell for 30 times as much.

--Bell-ringer for the global economy? What was behind the heavy selling last week in stocks of steel companies, coal miners and other industries that have been riding the strength of economic growth outside the U.S.? It might have been overdue profit-taking as the calendar turned to the new quarter. But if it continues this week, Wall Street may worry it’s a sign that investors are beginning to fear that the world could fall into recession in the second half, amid sky-high energy prices and credit-tightening moves by an increasing number of central banks.

--New landlord comes to town: Bank of America Corp. CEO Ken Lewis will be in L.A. on Wednesday to address a meeting of Town Hall Los Angeles -- and maybe to check on his latest acquisition, Countrywide Financial, which BofA officially acquired last week. BofA’s beleaguered shareholders can only hope for something in Lewis’ Town Hall speech (the title: ‘Mending Our Mortgage Markets’) that will stop the slow-motion crash in the stock, which ended last week at $22.40. It has lost almost half its value just in the last three months, a horrendous performance even in the context of the battered financial sector overall.