Kris Humphries may be mourning the death of his brief marriage to Kim Kardashian, but that may not be the only thing he has lost recently. It appears he may have been the victim of financial fraud, losing perhaps several hundred thousand dollars. Let his case be a warning to you: Here's what to watch out for.
This week, the government took a big first step toward shutting down the Can't Lose Room in the Wall Street Casino. It's now one comment period away from enacting the Volcker Rule, which limits the kinds of risky investments banks can make with money insured by the U.S. taxpayer.
Many of the economic problems of Sept. 11, 2001, feel awfully familiar today: Recession, bursting bubbles, low consumer confidence, predatory lending. But of course, it's a whole new world now, so we asked economists what the most significant shifts of the past decade have been.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has sued the estate of money manager Joel David Salinas, the president of J. David Financial who died last month, and Brian Bjork, chief investment officer of Select Asset Management, for allegedly selling $50 million of fake bonds.
Bank of America will soon finalize an $8.5 billion agreement to settle investor claims that Countrywide sold them lousy mortgage-backed securities before the housing bust. Meanwhile, private regulator FINRA is angling to take over the watchdog role for registered investment advisers.
If you need cash and have investments you don't want to sell, a stock-based loan may sound like a good idea. But the unregulated stock-based loan industry can be a risky way to tap into the value of your portfolio, warns the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Politicians in both Greece and the U.S. are struggling to find the common ground necessary to keep their governments from defaulting on their debts; QE2 hasn't ended yet, and already the Fed is considering QE3; and the SEC finally starts to regulate Wall Street's hedge funds.
Most investors don't know how their financial advisers are compensated -- many even think they are getting their advice for free. It's not a trivial matter: How you pay your adviser affects the rules they must adhere to, and the degree to which they have to put your interests first.
David Sokol, widely viewed as the heir apparent to famed investor Warren Buffett, abruptly resigned Wednesday. What investors want to know now is who's still in the running to succeed Buffett as CEO. Here are four possibilities.
The Securities and Exchange Commission's insider-trading charges against Rajat Gupta, former head of consulting firm McKinsey & Co., comes as a shock to many. The news comes after another McKinsey director pleaded guilty to insider-trading charges in January. Should we expect more to come?
When Countrywide Financial created deeply flawed mortgage-backed securities, it wasn't just selling bad financial products: It was breaking its contracts. Now some ordinary investors are suing Countrywide's buyer, Bank of America, to force it to repurchase those bad mortgages. That's their right, but there's nothing simple about this case, or its ramifications.
Nope, Angelo Mozilo won't be serving time, no matter what the evidence shows. In fact, he won't even face a trial. Wondering how the most convictable CEO among the titans who brought down the financial system is getting off so easy? The answer lies in the revolving door between Wall Street and its "regulators."
If you wish you could become a saver and investor, but you don't know where to begin, the Alliance for Investor Education wants to help: As part of its America Saves Week, the AIE has released its list of the top 10 online resources to help consumers build up their savings.
As multiple lawsuits and SEC actions progress in relation to the nation's mortgage mess, it's becoming clear that the misbehaviors of the lawyers involved at all stages were not isolated incidents: The misconduct was systemic, and it's time to start holding those lawyers accountable.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission's report concludes that ineffective regulators and big banks were the primary causes of the financial meltdown. Next stop: Government and class action lawsuits to recoup some of what we all lost, and (please please please) criminal charges against the worst offenders too.
The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday approved a measure that gives institutional shareholders a vote on executive pay at large corporations, part of regulators' efforts to give investors greater say over top-level salaries that have been described as excessive.
On Monday, a group of institutional investors sued Countrywide and Bank of America over Countrywide's mortgages practices. The bank is accused of issuing vast numbers of loans using methods that went beyond lax standards and into fraud, with the sole goal of repackaging them into securities to resell with inflated ratings.
Facebook expects its investor base will exceed 500 this year, a level at which the SEC will require it to disclose its financial results to the public. That may be enough to push the social networking giant into an IPO in 2012 -- but founder Mark Zuckerberg could opt to release that data and keep Facebook private anyway.
Facebook and many other tech startups have realized that the hassles and headaches of an IPO in the U.S. aren't always worthwhile. Thanks to willing venture capitalists and private investors, it's easier than ever for tech companies to avoid the lure of going public.
The biggest names in social networking -- Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn -- haven't yet gone public, but their stock does get traded by the very rich on private exchanges. Now, some of those transactions have raised the interest of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Linda Almonte, a former employee of JPMorgan Chase who is suing the bank for wrongful termination, has upped the ante by filing a whistleblower complaint with the SEC. She's alleging grotesque and illegal practices with Chase credit card accounts.
The feds appear to be trying to broaden the notion of insider trading to include the information-gathering of hedge funds as criminal activity. But this could be difficult to prove in court, because there's no statuary definition of insider trading.
On Wednesday, the FBI arrested Don Chu, an expert on Asian markets for Primary Global Research, setting the tone for the SEC's crackdown on insider trading. Chu was charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Wellington Management has received a document request from federal regulators looking into possible insider trading on the part of money managers with the firm, Bloomberg News reported, citing a person familiar with the process. Janus Capital Group also received such a request.
This week, the Congressional Oversight Panel recommended that the nation's big banks be stress tested again, because if problems with mortgage-backed securities are widespread, the consequences could be dire. Now, the Fed has agreed to run those tests, which it wouldn't do if it wasn't worried.
By the time the world's smartest investors tell the SEC what stocks they hold, most of the gains they were after are already priced in. But a few of the companies Warren Buffett, George Soros, and their billionaire buddies have bought into still have a lot further to rise. Which ones? Read on ...
A Boston-based law firm announced a lawsuit Friday against the Securities and Exchange Commission on behalf of investors conned by Bernie Madoff. The suit brought by Kacheroo Legal Services seeks class-action status, and if it goes forward, it will be the first such suit ever.
Goldman Sachs has been fined $650,000 by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for failing to properly disclose to regulators that two of its executives were going to be investigated by the Securities & Exchange Commission, FINRA announced Tuesday.
Additional changes to prevent another "flash crash" are on the way, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Monday. Among other things, the commission may tinker with the circuit breakers it set up to automatically halt trading if a stock falls 10% in five minutes.