Wall Street

washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

U.S. stocks slid in early trading following renewed concerns about Greece being forced out of the euro common currency. The Dow Jones industrial average was down 87 points, or 0.7%, to 12,416, shortly after the opening bell. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index was down 7 points, or 0.6%, to 1,309. The technology-focused Nasdaq was down 14 points, or 0.5%, to 2,825. Major European stock markets were down about 2%.

First of three parts Tiffany Lee wanted a car. She was weary of the two-hour bus ride to her job at a UCLA Health System clinic. She hated having to ask friends to drive her 7-year-old son to his asthma treatments. But as a single mother with three children, bad credit and a $27,000-a-year salary, she couldn't find a bank or dealership willing to give her a loan. Then a friend steered her to Repossess Auto Sales in Hawthorne. Another buyer might have balked at the deal she was offered.

Facebook is having a better day on Wall Street. The social networking site's stock is up more than $1, or about 3.5%, to around $32 in early trading Wednesday on its fourth day as a public company. As of Tuesday, Facebook's stock had fallen about 26% since its debut on the Nasdaq stock market Friday. The stock briefly rose to about $42 from its initial public offering price of $38. Facebook's IPO has been tumultuous. Its first day of trading was marred by glitches with Nasdaq trading.

BEIJING - "Beijing power struggle heralds end of China Communist Party," screams one headline. More sensational headlines purport to reveal how the wife of recently sacked Politburo member Bo Xilai poisoned an Englishman, who may have been her lover. And if that weren't enough, other stories claim that "Bo planned airline crash" and "slept with more than 100 women. " It's payback time for Chinese exiles, especially those with a printing press, television station or just a computer at their disposal.

There wasn't much to like about Facebook's first day as a public company. The social media giant's stock rose by mere pennies in its initial public offering. The shares closed at $38.23, barely above the $38 IPO price. The performance fell far short of the grandiose expectations of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and raised questions about whether the company's stock will be the sure bet many had counted on. "There was all this pressure and hype and attention with all eyes on Facebook — and the starlet tripped on the red carpet," said Max Wolff, an analyst at GreenCrest Capital Management in New York.

John S. R. Shad, who agreed Thursday to become chairman of Drexel Burnham Lambert's holding company, is a former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman known for strong convictions on ethics and free-market economics. During an SEC chairmanship that lasted between 1981 and 1987, the long-time E. F. Hutton investment banker presided over the agency's most far-ranging investigation of Wall Street corruption. He was personally shocked at the lawbreaking, friends say, and in 1987 pledged $30 million--most of his fortune--to set up a business ethics program at Harvard University.

As Facebook shares continued their slide, regulators launched inquiries into whether privileged Wall Street insiders were alerted to the company's weakening financial projections, leading them to shun the stock or dump shares just as buying was opened to the public. Morgan Stanley, which led the Wall Street effort to bring the social network public, came under fire following reports that the bank had told some favored clients that the bank was cutting its revenue estimates for Facebook.

Bank of America has agreed to reduce the loan balances of underwater homeowners more aggressively than other banks, saying that by next month it will start contacting 200,000 borrowers who may qualify. The pledge is part of a side deal that BofA signed when it and other large providers of mortgage customer service reached a recent $25-billion foreclosure-abuse settlement with state and federal government agencies. Writing down the balance of home loans for underwater borrowers — people who owe more than their homes are worth — is a controversial practice.

Maybe the dumb money wasn't so dumb this time. The stock market did turn out to be a voting machine on Facebook on Friday (to quote Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham), and the vote was thumbs-down on flapdoodle. Market pros will be debating the lessons to be drawn from the disastrous first-day trading in Facebook's initial public offering. But one lesson is that when given enough information, investors can find their way through fogbanks of hype. When a stock offering is as closely followed as Facebook's, it's much more likely that the shares will be fully valued than that they'll harbor hidden treasure.

Congratulations to Mark Zuckerberg on his surprise wedding last Saturday. I certainly hope his marriage gets off to a better start than Friday’s initial public offering of shares in his social networking colossus, Facebook.  Wall Street analysts are now saying the opening share price of $38 was too high for investors wary of buying into a business that delivers millions of messages and photos from college drinking parties but produces a comparatively modest revenue stream.

WASHINGTON — Already grappling with regulatory reviews of its troubled initial public offering, Facebook Inc. and the Wall Street banks that shepherded the deal are now under fire from lawmakers and lawyers. Two congressional committees said Wednesday that they would conduct preliminary inquiries into the IPO. And attorneys filed two separate lawsuits alleging that average investors were misled in the days before Facebook shares began trading Friday. "Shareholders suffered billions of dollars in losses," said Darren Robbins, a partner in the San Diego law firm of Robbins Geller Rudman & Dow, which filed one of the suits.

As Facebook shares continued their slide, regulators launched inquiries into whether privileged Wall Street insiders were alerted to the company's weakening financial projections, leading them to shun the stock or dump shares just as buying was opened to the public. Morgan Stanley, which led the Wall Street effort to bring the social network public, came under fire following reports that the bank had told some favored clients that the bank was cutting its revenue estimates for Facebook.

A Disposition to Be Rich How a Small-Town Pastor's Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated Man in the United States Geoffrey C. Ward Alfred A. Knopf: 415 pp., $28.95. In 1863, the young Ferdinand Ward was alone with his mother in their parsonage in Geneseo, N.Y., his minister father and older brother both off to war and his older sister visiting relatives out of town. Diphtheria swept through the village, killing friends and neighbors, and each mail delivery carried the risk of disaster - would it include a notice that one of the Ward men had been killed?

WASHINGTON - Aiming squarely at GOP critics of Wall Street reform, President Obama said Saturday that investment bank JPMorgan's stunning $2-billion loss serves as a reminder of the importance of Washington's role in preventing another financial crisis. The 2010 financial overhaul law counts among Obama's signature legislative achievements, but it continues to come under attack by Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail, including likely presidential nominee Mitt Romney, as an example of government overreach.

WASHINGTON - The $2-billion trading loss at JPMorgan Chase & Co. rekindled fears about the stunning risks still being taken on Wall Street, reviving demands for tougher financial rules and calls for the nation's biggest banks to be broken up. U.S. and British regulators said they were investigating the huge loss in a trading portfolio at JPMorgan. The bank saw its stock tumble 9% on Friday, the day after it disclosed that traders in New York and London had made misguided investments in complex derivatives in an effort to hedge against losses.

The iPhone has been a huge hit for Apple Inc., helping send the company's stock to all-time highs and producing record-breaking profits. But for AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc., it's breaking the bank. The three wireless carriers all found themselves answering to Wall Street in recent weeks for posting depressed quarterly earnings, and analysts pointed to the heavy cost of offering the iPhone as a culprit. The iPhone has become the single most popular smartphone in the U.S., and that has left the carriers trapped in a kind of Faustian deal: The more iPhones they sell, the more money they lose.

No one wants to utter the word "depression." But the truth of the matter is that the American economy may be entering a state of free fall. Every day brings more bad news about the sub-prime mortgage debacle, about home foreclosures, construction industry slowdowns, a credit drought for consumers and businesses, oil price shocks and the open-ended devaluation of the dollar. Where is it all leading?

Re "Lehman elite stood to get $700 million," April 27 "The numbers are shocking but consistent withthe fact that in some ways Wall Street has been run asa casino for extracting money from the real economy and using it to pay extraordinary high levels of compensation. " This quote by Lisa Donner of Americans for Financial Reform in The Times' article on Lehman Bros. aptly sums up what is wrong with Wall Street. This has been Wall Street since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act; it still is a gambling enterprise.