Who really won in Facebook's IPO mess

The social network's purported mission is to connect all the world's people. But its messy IPO benefitted a select group of insiders and institutions.

FORTUNE -- When Mark Zuckerberg's stated mission to connect and empower people collides with Wall Street's actual mission, which is to empower and enrich the well-connected, guess which mission prevails? Wall Street's, hands down. That's the lesson we can take from the debacle of Facebook's initial public MORE

JPMorgan's losses: No major victory for Volcker Rule

Bash JPMorgan all you like, and feel free to snicker at the spectacle of Jamie Dimon losing his swagger. But don't confuse Morgan's mess-up with the supposed need for the Volcker Rule. By Allan Sloan

United Technologies' $1 billion employee college plan

Looking for a corporate feel-good story? UTC's Employee Scholar Program just hit a major milestone.

FORTUNE -- Sometimes big companies do good things for their employees during bad times. And keep on doing it, quietly, without making a fuss. That's the thought that crossed my mind when I heard that United Technologies Corp., a hard-nosed industrial conglomerate that makes things like aircraft engines and elevators and helicopters and is No. 48 MORE

How to cut Social Security mercifully

If we're going to cut benefits -- which is likely inevitable -- let's be careful to mitigate the impact on the less fortunate.

FORTUNE -- Well, there's at least one virtue to the depressing numbers that Social Security's trustees unveiled last week -- they prove that I was right in February when I wrote that the system's finances had deteriorated badly thanks largely to the energy price boosts created by Arab MORE

Obama's politically astute tax return

How is it possible that someone of President Obama's net worth shows not a penny of tax-advantaged capital gains or dividend income on his tax returns? Politics.

FORTUNE -- Happy Tax Day. That's the thought that ran through my mind last week when I looked at President Obama's 2011 tax return, which the White House released last Friday.

Forgive my skepticism—all right, I guess you can call it cynicism—but the more I MORE

Why you shouldn't buy bonds anytime soon

You'd have to be a psychic to know where stocks are headed, but you don't need a crystal ball to know that corporate bonds are a bad bet.

FORTUNE -- It's one of those eternal truths. Just as you can be sure that daffodils and forsythia will blossom this time of year, you can be sure that mutual fund investors will collectively act like blooming idiots by doing the wrong thing MORE

Ben Bernanke is just doing his job, folks

Love them or hate them, the Fed crew are the rare breed in Washington that aren't just looking out for Number One.

FORTUNE -- We have an unfortunate tendency in this country to treat people as either heroes or villains, with no gradations in between. Take Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. He's being called exceptionally vicious names by right-wing types for supposedly undermining our currency and planting the seeds for future inflation -- MORE

Cut Social Security for the rich? We already have.

It's an old trope: Tap the nation's wealthy to help the less fortunate in their autumn years. Too bad they're already tapped out.

FORTUNE -- It's almost time for one of Washington's rites of spring: the arrival of the new Social Security trustees' report. The report, which is usually issued in April, will show Social Security's finances deteriorating because of a higher-than-projected inflation adjustment for 2012. This is likely to touch MORE

Social Security is set for a new $300 billion hit

Inflationary fallout from the Arab Spring pushed up payouts to Social Security beneficiaries, leaving an already troubled system in even worse financial shape.

FORTUNE -- Washington was consumed for months by the debate of how to "pay" for this year's Social Security tax holiday, which cut the tax employees pay to 4.2% of their covered wages from the normal 6.2%.

But unnoticed amid the debate, Social Security's finances have deteriorated badly over MORE

Wall Street needs to give up its bargain tax rates

Investment managers have held on to it for years, but 'carried interest' carries an odious loophole that needs to go.

FORTUNE -- Politics has moments when it's actually useful. Case in point is the uproar over Mitt Romney's tax returns, which may help rid us of a small but noxious and symbolic loophole worth several billion dollars a year to managers of investment partnerships.

I'm talking about "carried interest" -- finance-speak for MORE