SEC's pitiful Pequot war

How's "better late than never" as the new motto for the Securities and Exchange Commission?

The SEC on Thursday brought civil insider trading charges against Pequot Capital Management and its CEO Art Samberg. Samberg and the firm agreed to pay $28 million to settle allegations that they made $14 million on illicit trades of Microsoft (MSFT) stock nine years ago.

Out of the barn

"The cases have two particularly troubling aspects," said MORE

China bucks up the euro

The Chinese aren't fleeing the euro, the government's foreign exchange office said.

The Financial Times reported Wednesday that Chinese officials were reviewing their holdings of euro zone debt in meetings with bankers. The report suggested another source of selling pressure on the free falling euro and sent shudders through markets Wednesday afternoon.

Eye of the storm?

But on Thursday, China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange posted a statement contending that reports the MORE

How low can Moody's go?

We may find out Thursday, following the latest round of bad news for the beleaguered ratings agency.

Longtime nemesis David Einhorn told investors at a conference in Manhattan Wednesday that he is still betting on a decline in the shares of Moody's (MCO). And the company's chief executive, Raymond McDaniel, was summoned for a hearing next week before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in New York.

He is to appear before the MORE

Treasury whittles away at its Citi stake

The government is done with its first sale of Citi stock, but it isn't done selling.

Treasury said Wednesday afternoon that it received $6.2 billion in its first sale of Citi (C) shares and added that it "expects to continue selling its shares in the market in an orderly fashion."

The government sold 1.5 billion shares over the past month through Morgan Stanley and has arranged to sell that much again between MORE

Hedge funds unravel Disney case

Think hedge funds are full of villains slyly plotting to take your money and bring the civilized world to its knees?

Think again. It was hedge funders who exposed the "brazen" plot against Disney (DIS) that the authorities revealed Wednesday, the SEC went out of its way to note.

That said, we probably shouldn't get carried away with the idea that the guys who turned these clowns in deserve the Congressional Medal of Honor. Brazen in MORE

Watchdog swats Citi in death scam

So much for that business about Citi never sleeping.

The giant bank agreed Wednesday to pay $1.5 million to settle claims that it dozed off at the switch as one of its brokers allegedly joined his customers in a scheme to steal tens of millions of dollars from the dead.

Not in evidence at Citi

The Financial Industry Regulatory Agency, the self-regulator known as Finra, said Citi (C) agreed to pay a MORE

OECD: joblessness on the horizon

Growth is back. Jobs? Not so much.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development boosted its economic growth forecasts for 2010 and 2011, saying rich countries' economies are recovering faster than expected.

But it warned of increasing risk from the sovereign debt bug that has bitten Europe this spring, and added that high levels of joblessness will complicate long-awaited fiscal belt-tightening plans.

In need of support

The OECD said it expects gross domestic MORE

Can Geithner sell Europe on stress tests?

Tim Geithner has a monster of a sales job of ahead of him.

Geithner, the Treasury secretary, is planning to push European officials this week to conduct bank stress tests, CNBC reported. He'll make the case that holding the tests, publishing the results, and helping laggards to raise new capital could help restore flagging investor confidence in European banks. The tests did the trick a year ago in the United States, MORE

Barney Frank: The Lincoln assassin?

Chalk up another vote against Blanche Lincoln's crackdown on the financial weapons of  mass destruction.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said in a speech in Washington Tuesday that the regulatory reform bill passed by the Senate last week "goes too far" in proposing to bar the biggest banks from dealing in derivatives.

Banks are open

Five bank holding companies -- JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), Goldman Sachs (GS), Citigroup (C) and MORE

Why you shouldn't sweat Europe

There's an upside to the too-big-to-fail problem, believe it or not.

Do rising credit spreads and tumbling stock prices signal that the U.S. is in for another shock like the one that sent the economy into free fall in 2008?

Glass half full

Don't bet on it. While there are problems all over the globe and stocks could easily head still lower after a recent correction, there are signs the domestic economy MORE