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Street Sweep - Fortune Finance: Hedge Funds, Markets, Mergers & Acquisitions, Private Equity, Venture Capital, Wall Street, Washington
Apparently Bernie Madoff wasn't the only bad apple at Nasdaq. In the latest shining moment for the U.S. stock exchanges, the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday charged Donald Johnson, a former Nasdaq managing director, with ripping off investors to the tune of $755,000 by insider trading ahead of the release of corporate press releases. Johnson, you will be impressed to learn, was in charge through October 2009 of the Nasdaq's "market intelligence" desk, which is surely a misnomer but seems in any case to have afforded him with a lot of info he used to trade profitably on outfits like United Therapeutics ( UTHR ). Fearless leader The SEC has come under heavy fire in recent years for its failure to nab Madoff, a three-term Nasdaq chairman in the 1990s, before he frittered away $20 billion in the biggest-ever Ponzi scheme. But the agency is doggedly trying to restore its good name by putting really catchy quotes in its press releases, an effort that was much in evidence Thursday.Personal Finance News & Latest Personal Finance Headlines - DailyFinance.com
Personal Finance 8 Tips for Protecting Your Finances Before You Move In With Someone by Business Insider Mar 28th 2013 10:00AM Sad fact: Many couples who move in together split up. Life coach Michele Callahan offers tips on choices you can make at the start that'll make move-out day much easier. 5 Best Apps to Help You Invest Smarter
One of the most famous and funny Monty Python skits is the “Four Yorkshiremen. ” Four cigar-smoking, tux-wearing swells recount their childhood and try to top each other with stories of hardship. One says he used to live in a single room with 26 others. “Eh, you were lucky to have a room!
The Wealth Report
284,000: Number of American college graduates working in minimum-wage jobs in 2012. The Wall Street Journal this week reported on the troubling trend of college graduates getting stuck in low-skilled jobs, a problem that new research suggests may endure even after the economy improves. As the story noted, college graduates tend to earn more than their less-educated coworkers, even within the same field.
Real Time Economics
If a gaffe is what happens when a politician accidentally tells the truth, what’s the word for when a politician deliberately tells the truth? Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the current head of the Eurogroup, held a formal, on-the-record joint interview with Reuters and the FT today, saying that the messy and chaotic Cyprus solution is a model for future bailouts. Those comments are now being walked back , because it’s generally not a good idea for high-ranking policymakers to say the kind of things which could precipitate bank runs across much of the Eurozone. But that doesn’t mean Dijsselbloem’s initial comments weren’t true; indeed, it’s notable that no one’s denying them outright. Dijsselbloem’s interview can be summed up simply: we’re not bailing out banks any more.
Felix Salmon
Europe’s economic situation is viewed with far less concern than was the case six, 12 or 18 months ago. Policymakers in Europe far prefer engaging the United States on a possible trade and investment agreement to more discussion on financial stability and growth. However, misplaced confidence can be dangerous if it reduces pressure for necessary policy adjustments. There is a striking difference between financial crises in memory and as they actually play out. In memory, they are a concatenation of disasters.
Lawrence Summers