The Dodd-Frank financial regulatory bill, ostensibly aimed at reforming Wall Street and preventing a future financial crisis, will impose racial and gender quotas on financial institutions if passed, according to economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth. (more)
Making money in the stock market hasn’t been this tough since the fall of 2008. Bear in mind that in the short-term the bears may very well be in control. Stock markets are succumbing to the deflationary, and very negative conditions in many European nations that have been driven by very real necessity to cut budget deficits and reduce debt. This fiscal discipline is not priming the pump of slowing economies. (more)
The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday tightened restrictions against “pay-to-play” practices in the municipal securities market. (more)
A blue-ribbon panel investigating the financial crisis will put Goldman Sachs executives on the hot seat next week, along with officials from American International Group Inc., the big insurance conglomerate. (more)
“Re·cid·i·vism [ri-ˈsi-də-ˌvi-zəm] noun: a tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behavior; especially: relapse into criminal behavior.”—Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary (more)
WASHINGTON — President Obama, whose vilification of insurers helped push a landmark health care overhaul through Congress, plans to sternly warn industry executives at a White House meeting on Tuesday against imposing hefty rate increases in anticipation of tightening regulation under the new law, administration officials said Monday. (more)
Fannie Mae (FNM.N) and Freddie Mac (FRE.N), the largest U.S. home funding companies, will delist their shares on the New York Stock Exchange after failing to meet minimum trading price requirements, the companies' regulator said on Wednesday. (more)
Jeff Greene got rich betting against the real estate market. Now he’s hoping to get elected to the Senate from a state whose economy has been devastated by the collapse of that very market. (more)
A Virginia-based insurance company says “considerable uncertainties” created by the Democrat’s health care overhaul will force it to close its doors by the end of the year. (more)
People think of investing as a private matter. The goal is to finance your personal retirement. You make your choices and you live with the results. It’s not the place of the larger community to protect you from making bad decisions or to encourage you to make good ones. When you invest, you are on your own. (more)
FORTUNE — Several downtrodden cities are on the verge of defaulting on their debt, putting financially encumbered states and taxpayers on the hook to pick up the tab. The National League of Cities says municipal governments will probably come up $56 billion to $83 billion short between now and 2012. That’s the tab for decades of binge spending; municipal defaults could be our collective hangover. (more)
Every month I receive a financial statement from one of the Wall Street behemoth firms. The raw materials used in the mailing—paper and stamps—are generally worth more than my account balance. (more)
The glitch: Nasdaq Chief Executive Robert Greifeld has said several factors contributed to last week’s near-1,000-point drop in the Dow: “I think it was a confluence of factors led by the marcro-economic environment, the futures market and then the listed market for those stocks.” Regulators originally thought a trading glitch may have caused the market to freefall, but Greifeld believes that was only one aspect. The fear that financial unrest in Greece could be spreading to other European countries, and heightened activity in the futures market that spilled into the equity market contributed to the issue. On Thursday, 27 U.S. stocks dropped more than 90 percent as U.S. equities tumbled, before recovering by the close. More than 285 securities rose or fell more than 60 percent during the stock-market’s plunge and will have these trades canceled. On Sunday, Nasdaq added another 12 stocks to the list of trades it was canceling following Thursday’s sudden market plunge. (more)
Stocks selloff sharply Thursday, extending the recent downturn as investors continued to worry that Europe’s debt problems will slow a bigger global economic recovery. (more)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Shares of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. plunged 9 percent Friday after word that the Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation of the Wall Street powerhouse over mortgage securities deals it arranged. (more)
WASHINGTON — A top prospect for the Supreme Court was a paid member of an advisory panel for the embattled investment firm Goldman Sachs, federal financial disclosures show. (more)
Many Americans said “No!” to ObamaCare in polls and recent elections from Virginia to New Jersey to Massachusetts. But, now it has passed. The majority of citizens still want it repealed. The anger and frustrations are unlikely to subside as some politicians are hoping. ObamaCare is now the law of the land. That may change with the pending constitutional challenges, but the time has come to plan ahead and prepare for a very different future. While lawyers and politicians consider “repeal and replace” reform initiatives, employers and benefit managers must move to implement. (more)
A Suffolk Superior Court judge yesterday denied a request that would have let six Massachusetts health insurers go forward with double-digit rate hikes for tens of thousands of small businesses and individuals, setting up a protracted battle that could become a test of government’s role in controlling health care costs. (more)
In the continuing debate over the recently signed health care bill, the flash point is the individual mandate—the requirement that nearly all American adults purchase what the federal government determines is an adequate amount of personal health insurance. Even though this aspect of the bill had received widespread support in the business community and has been supported in the past by some Republicans, many Americans still see such a sweeping mandate as a bridge too far. (more)
New York began its fiscal year Thursday with a budget that is projected to spend $9 billion more than the state brings in in revenues. (more)
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