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Federal prosecutors are looking into whether banks misled investors about their roles in mortgage-bond deals. Targeted banks include Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and UBS. At the same time, New York's Attorney General is launching a separate probe of whether some banks misled ratings agencies.

Stocks held on to gains as the Fed left its key lending rate unchanged and on better-than-expected news from economic reports on housing starts and import prices. The S&P500 continued its climb, finishing at a 17-month high set in October 2008, at 1,159.46, up 8.95 points.

Overall U.S. home values declined again in the fourth quarter of 2009. While prices in some markets appear to have hit bottom, values are slipping again in many parts of the country, even in some areas that had seen some gains.

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor's says it may downgrade Japan's current AA sovereign debt to AA-. S&P has officially changed its outlook on Japan's debt from stable to negative. Is Japan the canary in the credit coal mine for the U.S. and U.K.?

The rate of decline for house prices has stalled, according to the latest Case-Shiller index of sale prices in 20 U.S. cities. The report shows prices in 13 cities stayed almost flat. Seven had month-over-month gains, and all 20 continue to improve on a year-over-year basis. Still, the worst may not be over yet.

If the health care bills in Congress become law, the biotech sector may become one of the biggest beneficiaries. Here are six stocks and mutual funds that stand to gain the most from the changes.

Warren Buffett dumps more of his Moody's shares. Moody's stock is up by about 5 percent over the last six months, compared with a 25 percent increase in the DJIA, and soon credit-ratings companies may face stricter regulation by Congress.

If two new reports are accurate, investors have something to cheer about heading into 2010. Goldman Sachs strategists predict the Standards and Poors index will rise by another 13 percent. Meanwhile, some analysts predict that dividend payouts will rise by as much as 8.9 percent.

Cash-strapped consumers are eating more meals at home and that's slathering J.M. Smucker's (SJM) bottom line in sweet, sticky profits. The packaged-food maker said Friday that fiscal second-quarter earnings boomed more than 170%, blowing past Wall Street's estimates by 18 cents a share, according...

It is all but certain that ratings of mortgage-backed securities by S&P and Moody's (MCO) were influenced by the money that the issuers paid to the credit ratings agencies. This money was not for bribes, but it did fatten the wallets of the two operations. Congress has been all over the...