Financial Crisis

ATHENS - Eva, a well-groomed pensioner, grasps her creamy white purse, glancing impatiently at her gold Cartier watch as she waits for the manager of an Athens bank. She is offered tea, cookies and orange juice, none of which the state bank usually provides, and none of which Eva accepts. "I'm concerned," says the 82-year-old, who declined to give her last name because she was involved in a private transaction. "I'm thinking of withdrawing all my savings. " Greek banks have been bleeding money since inconclusive elections this month, and the rise of a Marxist-Leninist leader bent on bustingBerlin'sausterity crusade, plunged the country into the biggest political crisis in decades and raised the specter of a devastating default.

NEW YORK Shortly after Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s board learned of famed investor Warren Buffett's $5-billion lifeline at the height of the financial crisis, then-director Rajat Gupta phoned hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam. Rajaratnam, a federal prosecutor said Monday, then used that information when he snapped up Goldman stock before the deal was announced in September 2008. Prosecutors said Gupta helped Rajaratnam make $1 million in just six minutes with the help of illegal inside information.

Americans are pumping money into bank accounts at a blistering pace this year, sending deposits to record levels near $10 trillion on escalating fears that the U.S. economy is on the verge of another implosion. There's no sign that the flood into checking, savings and money market accounts is slowing down. In the last three months, accounts at U.S. commercial banks have increased $429 billion, or 10%, almost double the increase for all of last year. There's one big problem: Banks don't want your money.

ATHENS - Eva, a well-groomed pensioner, grasps her creamy white purse, glancing impatiently at her gold Cartier watch as she waits for the manager of an Athens bank. She is offered tea, cookies and orange juice, none of which the state bank usually provides, and none of which Eva accepts. "I'm concerned," says the 82-year-old, who declined to give her last name because she was involved in a private transaction. "I'm thinking of withdrawing all my savings. " Greek banks have been bleeding money since inconclusive elections this month, and the rise of a Marxist-Leninist leader bent on bustingBerlin'sausterity crusade, plunged the country into the biggest political crisis in decades and raised the specter of a devastating default.

Mexico received more bad economic news Friday with a report that shows poverty is steadily on the rise. The number of Mexicans living in poverty grew to 52 million in 2010, up by more than 3 million people from two years earlier, the report says. That means 46.2% of the population lives in poverty. Within that group, 11.7 million people live in extreme poverty, a figure that held steady over the same period. The report was produced by the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy, an autonomous but federally financed agency, and represents the state's most comprehensive study of poverty to date.

Lehman Bros. is supposed to be dead and gone, but if you step off the elevator at the 40th floor of a midtown Manhattan skyscraper, you might think you've seen a ghost. Behind imposing glass doors stands a gleaming brown reception desk displaying, in silver letters, the name of the Wall Street giant that collapsed spectacularly two years ago this month, triggering the worst phase of the financial crisis. Well-dressed Wall Streeters buzz back and forth. On one floor, investment managers tend to tens of billions of dollars of real estate and other holdings.

TAMPA, Fla. - After surviving a push to oust him as chairman, embattled JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon now faces a Justice Department probe into how the bank lost $2 billion from risky trades. The investigation, being handled by the FBI's financial crimes squad in New York, is still at a preliminary stage. But it adds to mounting scrutiny into the bank's global trading business, which already is the target of inquiries by the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The federal government is seeking more than $1 billion from Deutsche Bank in a fraud lawsuit that could open a new front in a campaign to punish companies that churned out the low-quality mortgages blamed for sparking the financial crisis. The lawsuit filed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court says the German financial giant's New York-based home lender, MortgageIT, recklessly approved 39,000 mortgages for government insurance from 1999 to 2009 "in blatant disregard" of whether borrowers could make the required monthly payments.

Aging members of America's middle class worry about retirement, and for good reason. When the TV talking heads aren't reminding us about plummeting house prices, they're speculating about not whether but by how much politicians will cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. And the financial and economic crises of the last several years have left the country 10% poorer, obliterating $6.1 trillion in wealth, a healthy chunk of which was in retirement savings. The country's financial crisis came at a particularly bad time.

More than three years after its collapse during the darkest moments of the global financial crisis, Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. emerged from bankruptcy Tuesday. Rather than the start of a new chapter, however, the move is just the latest maneuver in a drawn-out saga that has gone on far longer than expected. Lehman announced that it will begin distributing assets to creditors in a “complete liquidation.” But that process will take years, meaning that Lehman - or more accurately, its legal doppelganger - is unlikely to vanish anytime soon.

TAMPA, Fla. - After surviving a push to oust him as chairman, embattled JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon now faces a Justice Department probe into how the bank lost $2 billion from risky trades. The investigation, being handled by the FBI's financial crimes squad in New York, is still at a preliminary stage. But it adds to mounting scrutiny into the bank's global trading business, which already is the target of inquiries by the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The first heads are expected to roll as early as this week at JPMorgan Chase & Co., after the disclosure of a $2-billion trading loss that has rekindled fears about excessive risk taking on Wall Street. Three employees involved in the unit at fault for the losses are expected to leave the firm, although it is unclear precisely when, according to a source familiar with the matter who was unauthorized to speak publicly. Ina Drew, who has overseen the bank's chief investment office, is the highest-ranking JPMorgan employee expected to leave in the wake of the trading blunder revealed Thursday, according to the source.

WASHINGTON - JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon acknowledged Sunday that his company's $2-billion trading loss could empower government regulators seeking to place tighter controls on risky trades by large banks. "This is a very unfortunate and inopportune time to have had this kind of mistake," Dimon said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" with David Gregory. But the head of America's largest bank brushed aside the suggestion that the loss underscored the persistent risk posed by mismanagement at large banks more than three years after a financial crisis that forced billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts.

LONDON - For more than two years now, they have all imposed their will on Europe's raging debt crisis: German leaders. Panicked governments. Jittery financial markets. Bossy international agencies. The people? Not so much. Across the continent, officials have forced through brutal budget cuts despite mass protests from Paris to Prague. In Greece and Italy, technocratic prime ministers have been installed without a single citizen going to the polls. Of the 25 European nations that have agreed to a new treaty limiting public spending, only Ireland is bothering to let voters rule on it. But on Sunday, the people of France and Greece will have their say, in elections that have the potential to recast the debate over how to solve an economic unraveling that shows little signs of abating.

WASHINGTON -- Public companies should disclose the names of all employees who are paid more than $5 million a year to prevent the type of huge compensation packages given by Lehman Bros. in the year before the firm collapsed, California Rep. Brad Sherman said Friday. Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said he wasn't surprised that there were Lehman employees making large amounts of money. But he was surprised at how many were bringing home huge paychecks.

SAN FRANCISCO — Wells Fargo & Co. Chief Executive John Stumpf got to keep his pay, but little else went the banker's way during an acrimonious annual shareholder meeting. Demonstrators swarmed the Merchants Exchange Building in San Francisco's financial district to protest the bank's lending and foreclosure policies. Some shareholders couldn't get into the meeting as the crowd, which police estimated exceeded 1,000 people, shut down nearby streets. Inside the meeting, Stumpf was disrupted by protesters who made it into the auditorium: "The time for talk is over," said Richard Smith, an Episcopal priest in the low-income Mission District who urged Wells Fargo executives to show compassion for struggling borrowers.

A nationwide settlement on foreclosure practices has ended one headache for the banks involved, but there are signs that it is only the beginning of many others. The agreement between 49 states and five large banks gives the financial giants immunity from future complaints about some aspects of their foreclosure practices. The banks had previously made changes to improve the way they foreclose on homeowners and had put aside most of the funds necessary to pay for the $25-billion settlement.

After 21 months of battling to deal with their own economic problems, Europeans watched Monday as their financial woes at home were aggravated by trouble from abroad. The aftershock from the downgrading of America's credit rating Friday sent the continent's stock markets tumbling, despite hints that the bad news from the other side of the Atlantic may have begun to galvanize Europe's dithering leaders into concerted action. After a series of late night negotiations over the weekend, the European Central Bank made good Monday on its promise to begin buying bonds of Spain and Italy, big economies whose debt levels have prompted growing questions.

CHICAGO — Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said that improvement in the economy is promising, but he warned that too much deficit cutting too quickly could undermine the recovery. Speaking in Chicago, Geithner noted Wednesday that business investment in equipment and software is up 33% and exports have grown 24% in the last 21/2 years. "Overall, we have done a better job than many economies in making adjustments" after the financial crisis, he said. Geithner also commended Eurozone leaders for the safeguards they have put in place to curtail the threat of a new financial crisis.