Stocks are rising after two solid employment reports were released Thursday morning. First-time jobless claims fell for the second week in a row, according to the Labor Department. And Automatic Data Processing reported that private sector employment increased by 55,000 in May. Additionally,...

The big banks generally don't sue each other, but that's changing thanks to credit default swaps. Citigroup (C) is suing Morgan Stanley (MS) for $245 million, alleging Morgan failed to make good on credit default swaps held by Citi. Morgan claims that Citi engineered the underlying default that made the swaps come due, which was a breach of their CDS agreement. A big bank buying credit default swaps when it was involved in making the underlying debt obligation particularly risky ... hmmm ... where have we heard that before? Both sides have requested a ruling on the matter from District Judge Shira Scheindlin in New York. When Google's (GOOG) Android cell phone operating system hit the market, it was seen as a potenti

The New York Attorney General's office said Thursday it is filing civil charges against Bank of America and its former CEO Ken Lewis, saying the bank misled investors about Merrill Lynch when it acquired the Wall Street bank in late 2008.

Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad, Apple's new tablet computer today at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. Apple's CEO said the iPad is designed to be "better than the laptop, better than the smartphone" as it handles many basic functions: "Browsing the web. Doing email. Enjoying and sharing pics. Watching videos. Enjoying music. Playing games. Reading ebooks."

A number of bloggers have been wondering about the health of the banking system's ultimate backstop, the Federal Reserve. As Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture and Mike Larson at iStockAnalyst note, the Fed's balance sheet is falling apart, thanks to the acquisition of the same low quality paper...

Big news today for AOL: the company is getting a new CEO. Tim Armstrong, formerly Google's (GOOG) head of US sales, will be the new chair and CEO of AOL, a Time Warner (TWX) subsidiary (and the owner of this blog). Current AOL Chairman and CEO Randy Falco and President and COO Ron Grant plan to...

Bernard Madoff's lawyer told a judge today that his client plans to plead guilty to 11 counts this coming Thursday. The list of charges includes money laundering, perjury and securities, mail and wire fraud. Madoff could potentially receive a sentence of 150 years in jail. The announcement came at...

Rick Santelli made headlines a few weeks ago when he criticized President Obama's new housing plan live on CNBC. Millions of people saw him call for a "tea party" to protest the plan's supposed bailout of "losers" in danger of defaulting on their mortgages. In the wake of his impassioned rant,...

Zac Bissonnette recently wrote about a quote that is making the rounds on Wall Street. It claims to be a passage from Karl Marx that predicts our current economic predicament: Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing...