Free Republic

TEHRAN, Iran – A billionaire businessman at the heart of a $2.6 billion state bank scam, the largest fraud case since the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution, was executed Saturday, state television reported. Authorities put Mahafarid Amir Khosravi, also known as Amir Mansour Aria, to death at Evin prison, just north of the capital, Tehran, the station reported. The report said the execution came after Iran's Supreme Court upheld his death sentence. Khosravi's lawyer, Gholam Ali Riahi, was quoted by news website khabaronline.ir as saying that his client was put to death without any notice.

   My thinking was that if the current stock correction's now six weeks old, how old would that be if I could prove I was a cocker spaniel? fwiw, we're still inside both these trendlines and these too.   This is the thread where folks swap ideas on savings and investment --here's a list of popular investing links that freepers have posted here and tomorrow morning we'll go on with our-- Open invitation continues always for idea-input for the thread, this being a joint effort works well.   Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket.

It's easy: Let the banks fail and give the money to American taxpayers instead Are you still angry that Washington forced Main Street to bail out Wall Street during the Great Recession? Timothy Geithner can live with that. In his new book, Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises, the former Obama Treasury secretary insists government needed to stop the panic by whatever means necessary. During a five-alarm inferno, the thinking goes, it's smarter to focus on extinguishing the blaze than punishing the arsonists. And to Geithner, dissenters are misguided purveyors of "Old Testament vengeance" and "moral hazard fundamentalists." Geithner is...

imho this past week is what I'd call a 'head-scratcher', but here are some other people's ho's: (click on pic to enlarge) Gold Seeker Weekly Wrap-Up Gold climbed $5.04 to $1294.24 by a little before 8AM EST before it dropped back to $1285.54 in the next four and a half hours of trade, but it then bounced back higher into the close and ended with a loss of just 0.04%. Silver slipped to as low as $19.052 and ended with loss of 0.1%.  Next week’s economic highlights include the Treasury Budget on Monday, Retail Sales, Export and Import Prices,...

Investment & Finance Thread (May 4 edition)Something different we got while we begin this week is that we're also beginning a new month.  Now, lot's of folks say May's are always a good time to sell (while I crunch that to see if it's true, everyone's welcome to check out "How to Use This Shockingly Simple Method to Immediately Improve Your Investment Returns"), what different this time is that if we look a the past couple hundred months----we're seeing that it's been as long since the '07 peak that was the same seven years after the dot-com peak.  Coincidence?   This...

The permanent political class and their donors think a Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton battle in 2016 would be a win-win scenario, and many Republican Wall Street donors would rather have Clinton in the White House than Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) or Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). According to a Politico report, "the darkest secret in the big money world of the Republican coastal elite is that the most palatable alternative to a nominee such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky would be Clinton." “If it turns out to be Jeb versus Hillary we would...

NEW YORK — The biggest parlor game on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms these days is guessing whether former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will run for president and save the GOP’s old establishment base from its rising populist wing. The second most popular game is guessing what happens if Jeb says no. Two dozen interviews about the 2016 race with unaligned GOP donors, financial executives and their Washington lobbyists turned up a consistent — and unusual — consolation candidate if Bush demurs, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie doesn’t recover politically and no other establishment favorite gets nominated: Hillary Clinton....

While we've all been asking 'which way' for the past few weeks all we've been getting is 'nowhere in particular'.  OK, so in the past 3 months we've seen everything leap up but then they all flop back to next to nothing just sitting there for a few weeks.  Seems IBD called it right by saying the correction began 3 weeks ago with no 'uptrend' so far.  Major indexes have given us new lows and descending highs --with volume on the bearish side.We got all kinds of pundits predicting all kinds of directions, but imho the "usually reliable" signs say...

This is the thread where folks swap ideas on savings and investment --here's a list of popular investing links that freepers have posted here and tomorrow morning we'll go on with our-- Open invitation continues always for idea-input for the thread, this being a joint effort works well.   Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket. Here's what others are saying about what's going on-- Gold / Silver / Copper futures - weekly outlook: April 21 - 25 Investing.com - Gold prices ended the week sharply lower on Thursday, falling below the $1,300 level as indications that the U.S. economic recovery is progressing dampened...

The Internal Revenue Service audits fewer than 1 percent of large business partnerships, according to a government report released Tuesday. That means some of Wall Street’s largest hedge funds and private equity firms are largely escaping close scrutiny by the IRS, said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. The Government Accountability Office says the number of large businesses organized as partnerships has more than tripled since 2002, yet hardly any get audited. In 2012, only 0.8 percent were subjected to field exams in which agents do a thorough review of books and records. …

It is the most important question being asked of dozens of New Yorkers lined up as potential jurors for the trial of Cecily McMillan, an Occupy Wall Street activist accused of assaulting a police officer: what do you think of her protest movement? Unfortunately for those keen on the swift procession of justice, a series of Manhattan residents who presented themselves at the criminal courthouse this week declared that they strongly disagreed with it – and could not promise to be impartial about one of its members. “I’m involved in Wall Street things. I’m on the Wall Street side, not...

Investment & Finance Thread (Apr. 13 edition) This is the thread where folks swap ideas on savings and investment --here's a list of popular investing links that freepers have posted here and tomorrow morning we'll go on with our-- Open invitation continues always for idea-input for the thread, this being a joint effort works well.   Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket.======================   OK, so if April began with "a heck of a week", then it's moving along with another one that's even more so; we're seeing gold'n'silver maintain a rebound and stocks hammering down new lows (from here).  (click to enlarge)There're many opinions...

This is the thread where folks swap ideas on savings and investment --here's a list of popular investing links that freepers have posted here and tomorrow morning we'll go on with our--Open invitation continues always for idea-input for the thread, this being a joint effort works well. Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket. ====================== A heck of a week, gold'n'silver lept back up and stocks plunged back down --10 year performance:(click pic to enlarge) Of course, while that's all well and good for what's been happening til now (telling us what we shudda done) but the plan we need now is for what...

This is the thread where folks swap ideas on savings and investment --here's a list of popular investing links that freepers have posted here and tomorrow we'll go on with our--.  Open invitation continues always for input on ideas for the thread, this being a joint effort works well. Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket. ======================Year to date trends with stocks'n'metals--  --along with 'end-week' articles: Week Ahead: Jobs Boost Could Calm Stocks Amid Tech Wobble Amid signs that many technology and biotech stocks may have peaked -- the Nasdaq fell 3 percent last week -- markets will look to this coming Friday’s...

A rash of eight financial-industry suicides so far in 2014 has mental-health professionals trying to understand what’s behind it. In late winter many people suffer from depression, but for bankers this is usually offset by finding out how large their bonuses will be. However, compensation across the entire financial sector is down from years past as large firms deal with new rules pinching their bottom lines. The other, more pressing matter for mental health pros is: Why are such a large proportion of these self- murders public affairs? While there are no definitive theories on suicide location, many in the...

Investment & Finance Thread (Mar. 23 edition)This is the thread where folks swap ideas on savings and investment --here's a list of popular investing links that freepers have posted here.  We usually see this showing up on Monday mornings w/ a ping to freeper investors, but it seems the write up is being done on Sunday night anyway so starting now it's being shared as it comes out.     Open invitation continues always for input on ideas for the thread, this being a joint effort works well. Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket. Tomorrow morning of course we'll still have our --and the...

<p>Consider what passes for a scandal in New York City these days: The rich, conservative Koch family funding a wing of a city hospital. Wall Street types financing charter schools for poor kids in the South Bronx and Harlem. Non-union Walmart trying to open a store in a low-income neighborhood, which would deliver both cheaper goods and jobs to the locals.</p>

Last December, I wrote that Fortress Investment Group was preparing to launch a fund that would buy and hold Bitcoin. I also wrote that while details were scarce," there was "some relationship to a new Bitcoin-related fund raised by Pantera Capital, a San Francisco-based hedge fund whose clients are known to include several Fortress executives." Here is what I now know: Fortress has invested directly in Pantera Bitcoin Partners, the limited liability company overseeing Pantera's Bitcoin fund. Moreover, all future purchases of Bitcoin or other crytpocurrencies by Fortress and its principals will be made via Pantera. In other words, there...

Investment & Finance Thread 2014 New Year(Mar. 17 - nexttime edition)This is the thread where folks swap ideas on savings and investment --here's a list of popular investing links that freepers have posted here.  Open invitation continues always for input on ideas for the thread, this being a joint effort works well.   Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket.  We still hope to include here a ----so let me know if anyone wants on or off this ping.  Be advised that it gets posted only when I'm not feeling lazy and remember that we now know from studies that sloth is completely genetic...

A Manhattan trader was killed Tuesday morning by a speeding Long Island Rail Road commuter train, marking at least the seventh suicide of a financial professional this year. Edmund (Eddie) Reilly, 47, a trader at Midtown’s Vertical Group, jumped in front of an LIRR train at 6 a.m. near the Syosset train station. He was declared dead at the scene. Reilly’s identity was confirmed by Salvatore Arena, an LIRR spokesperson, who said an investigation into the incident was continuing. Passengers on the west-bound express train told MTA investigators they saw a man standing by the tracks before he jumped in...