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wallstreet
wallstreet
(afagen)
Wall Street Bonuses Take A Nosedive
By Phil Villarreal on November 8, 2011 10:30 AM
71 Comments
Belt-tightening is happening everywhere, even on Wall Street, where excess has always seemed to have reigned supreme. A compensation survey says bonuses for financial workers in the district are expected to fall between 20 and 30 percent this year. While those who don't receive any work bonuses won't shed tears for Wall Street types, at least this is a sign that the financial world is connected to reality. More »
Video: Occupy Portlanders Open Credit Union Accounts On Bank Transfer Day
By Ben Popken on November 7, 2011 11:00 AM
65 Comments
Saturday was the fifth of November, and many remembered to take a stand and shut down their big retail bank accounts, transferring their cash to a new credit union account. Here's a video out of Occupy Portland covering what happened on Bank Transfer Day. Interviewees talk about why they're switching to a credit union, and how this is just the beginning. More »
Video Of People Closing Down Their Accounts At Big Banks
By Ben Popken on November 4, 2011 10:00 AM
51 Comments
Tomorrow is Bank Transfer Day. By this date, people all across America are shutting down their accounts at large, costly, name-brand banks and transferring their funds to new bank accounts at their local credit union or community bank. Here is an excellent video made in Portland that follows along with several different people as they close their bank accounts and give their reasons for doing so. One person wants to save money, another disagrees with the bank's foreclosure practices, a third is mad about the bailouts, and the last is a union withdrawing its funds to show solidarity with holding Wall Street accountable. More »
What Wall Street Did To Earn The Ire Of Those Occupying It
By Ben Popken on October 27, 2011 5:00 PM
119 Comments
If you need a catchup-slash-refresher on why those folks down at Occupy Wall Street are so mad at the street they're occupying, ProPublica has put together a nice juicy primer. More »
Goldman Sachs Loses Money For First Time Since Financial Crisis Began
By Ben Popken on October 20, 2011 11:00 AM
43 Comments
For the first time since the advent of the financial meltdown, and for only the second time since 1999 when it became a publicly traded company, Goldman Sachs has — Gasp! Horror! Shock! — lost some money. More »
Madoff Victims Will Start Getting Refunds This Week
By Phil Villarreal on October 5, 2011 9:15 AM
16 Comments
Those who lost money investing with jailed shyster Bernie Madoff will be getting some of their ill-advised expenditures back this week, thanks to the bankruptcy court-mandated liquidation of his estate. More »
(_PaulS_)
Occupy Wall Street Protests Galvanized By 700+ Arrests On Brooklyn Bridge
By Ben Popken on October 3, 2011 3:00 PM
142 Comments
Over 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested when they marched across the Brooklyn Bridge this weekend, blocking traffic and shooting the movement into the national consciousness. More »
(_PaulS_)
Established Agitators To Join Occupy Wall Street Protest Next Week
By Ben Popken on September 30, 2011 10:00 AM
171 Comments
Going into its 14th day, the Occupy Wall Street protest is not only not fading out, it's about to get a big injection of support, and bodies. The established New York City labor and community groups who normally organize local marches, rallies and sit-ins, have announced they plan to join up next week. More »
Fed Doled Out $1.2 Trillion In Secret Loans To Giant Banks, Brokerages
By Phil Villarreal on August 22, 2011 9:00 AM
42 Comments
The Federal Reserve got loan-happy from 2007 to 2010, handing out mega funding to several top banks and brokerage firms, such as Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Bank of America. The secretive financial agreements were meant to stop the economy from plunging into depression. More »
Judge Tells Madoff Investors They Won't Get All Their Fake Money Back
By Ben Popken on August 16, 2011 3:00 PM
40 Comments
A federal judge shot down an appeal from Madoff investors who didn't just want the money they'd invested back, they wanted the amount of money Madoff said they were worth on paper. The judge said that Madoff's financial statements were "fictitious" and thus can't be used as a basis for claims by investors. More »
Daily Show: Downgrade Was Because US Government Doesn't Pay S&P Any Fees
By Ben Popken on August 12, 2011 12:00 PM
75 Comments
The US government got downgraded by S&P because, unlike corporations, they don't pay the ratings agency any fees, Columbia law professor John Coffee told The Daily Show. More »
Bank Of America CEO's Pep-Talk Email To Workers
By Ben Popken on August 9, 2011 3:00 PM
36 Comments
Bank of America's CEO Brian Moynihan posted an email to the company's intranet telling the rank and file to keep their chins up amidst their sinking stock price and news that they would be sued by AIG for selling crap mortgages. More »
Stocks Up After Days Of Bleeding
By Ben Popken on August 9, 2011 1:00 PM
29 Comments
After swooning on Monday following S&P's downgrade of US bonds, stocks posted gains on Tuesday as investors saw the over-reaction as a buying opportunity. Now investors look to see what the Federal Reserve policy board might say after their meeting later today. More »
(snigl3t)
Stocks Fall On Global Economy Fears
By Ben Popken on August 4, 2011 3:00 PM
61 Comments
Global stocks fell broadly Thursday afternoon amid worsening concerns about a global economic cooling and a European debt crisis. Each of the three major US indexes were down, deleting all the gains they had made so far this year. More »
Hedge Fund Billionaire Convicted On Insider Trading Charges
By Phil Villarreal on May 12, 2011 8:15 AM
33 Comments
The Justice Department has managed to nail a hedge fund billionaire believed to be one of the many driving forces behind the financial crisis. The billionaire, the founder of the defunct hedge fund management firm Galleon Group, was convicted on 14 counts of fraud and conspiracy. More »
Feds Gave $220 Million In Bailout Bucks To Two Morgan Stanley Wives For Some Reason
By Ben Popken on May 3, 2011 4:00 PM
95 Comments
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi - the guy who famously referred to Goldman Sachs as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money" - has an interesting expose of how the wives of two Morgan Stanley hot shots, though they had no previous financial experience, set up their own investing initiative and got $220 million in bailout funds. More »
(martyz)
Citigroup Still Selling Mortgages That Violate Quality Standards
By Ben Popken on January 18, 2011 12:00 PM
26 Comments
15% of the mortgages Citigroup sold to government-owned Freddie Mac from the second half of 2009 and the first part of 2010 were riddled with flaws, according to an internal report obtained by Bloomberg. The error rate should be about 5%. The mistakes included missing insurance docs, missing appraisals and income miscalculations. More »
Banks To Start Paying Dividends For First Time In 3 Years
By Ben Popken on January 14, 2011 11:00 AM
23 Comments
After a 3-year hiatus, banks, plumped up by big profits thanks to a dizzying array of federal aid programs, are ready to stay paying dividends again to investors. Before they can be restored, the government will conduct a round of secret "stress tests" to evaluate the banks' financial health. If all goes well, individual investors who had seen their dividends slashed to pennies, could start once again supping from the income stream. More »
Should Economists Have A Code Of Ethics? They're About To Vote On It
By Ben Popken on January 6, 2011 3:00 PM
57 Comments
Most professions, like lawyers, doctors, scientists, and sociologists adopted a code of ethics long ago but that could change soon for one of the lone holdouts, the curmudgeonly economists. Their big conference kicks off today in Denver. On the agenda is whether they should adopt such a code. A little movie called Inside Job might have something to do with it. More »
Stocks Up After Fed Releases Minutes
By Ben Popken on January 4, 2011 3:00 PM
20 Comments
The Federal Reserve Board, which sets US national monetary policy, released minutes from its latest meeting today, striking a tone of temperate growth. More »
