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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bernard Madoff, a long-time fixture and powerful adviser on Wall Street, was arrested and charged on Thursday with allegedly running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, U.S. authorities said. The former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market who remains a member of Nasdaq OMX Group Inc's nominating committee, is best known as the founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, the closely-held market-making firm he founded in 1960. But the alleged fraud involved a hedge fund he ran from a separate floor of the building where his brokerage is based. Madoff told senior employees of his...

Militants are being encouraged to use the online site through postings on other Islamic forums on the Internet. Wednesday, December 3, 2008 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Islamic extremists are being instructed on how to use the popular video-sharing site YouTube as a way to disseminate propaganda videos, a U.S.-based terrorism monitor said on Tuesday. Militants are being encouraged to use the online site through postings on other Islamic forums on the Internet, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. Last week, an extremist authored step-by-step instructions on posting video to YouTube, which he described as "one of the most famous and biggest...

Yesterday's Politico story puts it this way: Generally, financial analysts say the stock market likes Republicans more than Democrats. And while predicting market movements is as difficult as predicting the winner of the World Series in August, some experts say the market is already anticipating an Obama win on Nov. 4 and has at least partially accounted for it. “Potentially, you could see a one or two-day rally on a McCain victory, and not much of a reaction if Obama wins, because that’s what’s expected at this point,” said Justin Fishkin, a partner at The Cypress Group, a financial services...

Oil prices tumbled more than $6 a barrel Monday, briefly slipping below the $100 level as traders bet that global demand for petroleum products will keep falling despite a planned $700 billion U.S. financial bailout. A stronger dollar also weighed on crude prices as investors who bought oil and other commodities as a hedge against inflation sold their contracts. Light, sweet crude for November delivery fell as low as $99.80 a barrel in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange before edging up slightly to $100.28, down $6.61. The contract fell Friday $1.13 to settle at $106.89. Crude has...

HK investors protest losses on Lehman products By Jeffrey Hodgson Sun Sep 21, 6:06 AM ET More than 100 angry Hong Kong investors marched on government offices on Sunday, calling for action after losing money on structured products linked to failed U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The protesters, many of them elderly retirees, accused the government of failing to provide proper oversight and said local banks did not do enough to warn of them of the risks involved. Many had purchased so-called "minibond" products, notes secured by swap obligations guaranteed by Lehman. "They were misleading investors on the...

"Two years ago, I warned that the oversight of Fannie and Freddie was terrible, that we were facing a crisis because of it, or certainly serious problems," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CBS this morning. "The influence that Fannie and Freddie had in the inside the Beltway, old boy network, which led to this kind of corruption is unacceptable and I warned about it a couple of years ago.” How does this claim of foresight square with this interview that McCain gave to the Keene (NH) Sentinel, discussing the subprime mortgage crisis, in December 2007? Q: “Well the dimension of...

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Monday outlined plans for the four biggest U.S. banks to issue new bonds to stimulate mortgage lending, the latest in a series of steps to aid the troubled housing market. Paulson outlined rules to issue so-called covered bonds backed by mortgage loans. The instruments are popular in Europe but had little appeal in the U.S. until demand for mortgage-backed securities plummeted because of soaring home loan foreclosures. C,JPM,BAC,WFC...have signed up to issue covered bonds, seen as less risky than mortgage-backed securities. "Covered bonds have the potential to increase mortgage financing...

Investors this summer have been placing their bets on an Obama presidency, and for the most part that hasn't been good for the market. Without giving him a chance to explain himself in detail on the campaign trail or at the Democratic National Convention, they are voting with their shares by tossing financial, health insurance, manufacturing and high-dividend stocks into the ash can, and are growing skeptical about energy companies as well. It's not that major institutional investors don't like the man -- far from it. He has many backers among the financial elite, including multibillionaires George Soros and Ron...

While millions of American families struggle with falling house prices, soaring gasoline costs and tightening credit, some environmentalists, urban planners and urban real estate speculators are welcoming the bad news as signaling what they have long dreamed of -- the demise of suburbia. In a March Atlantic article, Christopher B. Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of urban planning, contended that yesterday's new suburbs will become "the slums" of tomorrow because high gas prices and the housing meltdown will force Americans back to the urban core. Leinberger is not alone. Other pundits, among them author...

Wall Street faces the growing risk of an equities bloodbath in coming months as the credit crunch spreads to the wider economy and earnings crumble, according to a pair of grim reports issued by Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo. David Kostin, the chief US investment guru for Goldman Sachs, expects the S&P 500 index of Wall Street equities to plummet a further 15pc over the "near term" as companies scramble to lower their outlook for this year. "Although only a few firms have reported first quarter results, early signs are awful. We expect a swath of lowered profit guidance," he...

First the good news: Automotive expert Ed Wallace says there's no gasoline or oil shortage in the U.S. today and near-record reserves are on hand. Now the bad news: Not only has the congressional mandate for ethanol jacked up the price of food, but Washington, Wall Street and fuel producers all want you to think the gas and oil shortage they keep talking about is real. Washington, Wallace says, appears to be protecting oil speculators and ethanol producers rather than the interests of U.S. citizens who will ultimately pay higher prices for food and U.S. farmers, who are already staggering...

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - The white bus rumbles into the quiet suburban neighborhood, heading toward a foreclosed home that sits empty. Neighbors, young and old, cock their heads in curiosity or point at the slow-moving coach. Once the vehicle stops, about 20 potential buyers file out and become detectives, opening and closing cabinets and drawers, knocking on walls and asking about the price, the previous owners and what repairs may be needed. Welcome to the Foreclosure Bus Tour, a six-hour expedition to show Orlando-area homes and educate potential buyers on the vagaries of snatching foreclosures in a state where the...

· Insurer blocks exit for 100,000 investors · Crisis has seen some funds lose 50% of value The insurance group Axa shut the door to withdrawals from its £2.1bn property funds yesterday, the latest victim of the slump in commercial property. Axa said more than 100,000 small investors in the fund would not be able to access their money for up to six months, although regular income already being paid, retirements and death claims will not be affected. It joins Friends Provident, Scottish Equitable and Scottish Widows in halting withdrawals from once high-flying funds, which many savers have seen as...

IN THE TUMULTUOUS MONTH of January the bears had their innings, and the bulls did too. We finished the month down 6.0% on the S&P 500. But on the other hand, measured from last week's bottom, stocks are up 5.2%. So the bears win it on points. But did they make any money in January? Probably not. You know what they were all saying, their leering ghoulish faces snarling on CNBC that the world banking system was going to be sucked into a black hole thanks to "subprime slime." But over the month of January the financial sector of the...

This just in: The much-ballyhooed Stoneridge case has come down. Here’s the opinion. The Supreme Court has voted 5-3 that investors can’t bring private lawsuits against third parties in corporate-fraud cases unless they relied on actions by those parties when making investment decisions. (Justice Breyer did not participate in the case.) Here’s the early story from Dow Jones Newswires. For earlier Law Blog posts on Stoneridge, click here, here and here. Here, also, is an exchange on the issues from last year between two securities-law heavyweights. The case centered on the issue of “scheme liability,” i.e., whether third parties —...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Tuesday curbed investor lawsuits against businesses accused of scheming to inflate stock prices. In a 5-3 ruling, the court gave a measure of protection from securities suits to suppliers, banks, accountants and law firms that do business with publicly traded companies. The court ruled against investors who alleged that two suppliers colluded with Charter Communications Inc. to deceive Charter's stockholders and manipulate the price of the cable TV company's stock. Charter investors do not have the right to sue because they did not rely on the deceptive acts of Charter's suppliers, said the majority...

Investors warned of slide in shares By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor Last Updated: 1:42am BST 25/10/2007 The credit crisis is far from over and British shareholders are at serious risk of becoming its next victims, the Bank of England warns. Full coverage of the credit crisis | Interest rates In an unexpectedly downbeat report on the state of the British financial system, the bank warns that the UK stock market is "particularly vulnerable" to a downturn. Almost all British workers have money invested in shares – either directly or indirectly through their pensions and life assurance plans – and could...

Call them grave dancers, vulture funds, turnaround specialists or the more euphemistic "opportunity investors." However you identify them, the deal is the same: When hyperactive real estate markets lose their sizzle, or property owners no longer can afford to hang on to their houses, well-capitalized investors smell blood and move in.

Security: Newly released books and films show a growing pop-culture bias against U.S. counterterror efforts. It's another sign the pendulum is swinging back to a 9/10 state of mind. Six years ago we were united as a nation against a common enemy — 300 million Americans resolved to defeat Islamic extremists. Even Hollywood was on board. But as the nightmare that befell our nation dims, we have turned our anger inward. Now the enemy is portrayed in pop culture as the government, the military and law enforcement — the very forces aligned to protect us from the Islamist enemy. The...

Even as he sits in the suburban Bay Area jail that once housed condemned killer Scott Peterson, Norman Hsu is still a wanted man. Jilted investors who sunk $63 million into Hsu's alleged Ponzi schemes are competing for whatever financial crumbs they can shake from the disgraced Democratic fundraiser. At the same time, state and federal prosecutors are wrangling over where he should be jailed. "We have the body," California Deputy Attorney General Ronald Smetana argued last week outside San Mateo Superior Court after a shackled Hsu was ordered held without bail. Hsu's fall from top-tier fundraiser has been swift:...