Financial Crisis

Facebook was supposed to soar. Instead, it plunged. After the social network's stock fizzled on Friday in its long-awaited debut, its stock fell 11 percent on Monday, even as the rest of the stock market rallied. The downward spiral has left some people sitting on big losses, and others scratching their heads. After all, nothing fundamental has changed at Facebook in the days since the much-hyped company came to the stock market — Facebook still has more than 900 million users, its 28-year-old founder Mark Zuckerberg controls the company, and it is still one of the few...

Hewlett-Packard helped pull the Dow Jones industrial average to a slight gain Thursday, giving the index only its fourth gain this month. Stocks flipped between gains and losses throughout the day after a meeting of European leaders failed to deliver new steps to ease the region's debt crisis. The Dow closed up 33.60 points at 12,529.75. Fears that Europe's troubles could turn into a worldwide financial crisis have pushed the 30-stock average down 5 percent this month, erasing most of its gains for the year.

When the head of JPMorgan Chase met with shareholders to answer for a trading loss of more than $2 billion Tuesday, it was against an evolving political backdrop: Donors from big banks are betting on Mitt Romney to defeat President Obama and repeal new restraints on risky, large-scale investments. "There's no doubt that there's been a big diminution of support for the president," said William M. Daley, Obama's former chief of staff and a former top JPMorgan Chase executive. "People in the financial services sector are saying, ‘The president has been too tough on us, both in policy and on...

Italian Premier Mario Monti says so-called eurobonds, debt issued jointly by countries in the eurozone, should be considered soon to help the region overcome its financial crisis. Monti told a news conference in Rome on Thursday that Italy sees eurobonds as a means of preparing the ground for investments that promote growth. The issue of eurobonds has been contentious. They would lower borrowing rates for countries with weaker finances, but would also raise them for stronger economies.

JPMorgan Chase faces intense criticism for claiming that a surprise $2 billion loss by one of its trading groups was the result of a sloppy but well-intentioned strategy to manage financial risk. More than three years after the financial industry almost collapsed, the colossal misfire was cited as proof that big banks still do not understand the threats posed by their own speculation. "It just shows they can't manage risk — and if JPMorgan can't, no one can," Simon Johnson, the former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, said Friday.

Now that the Dow Jones industrial average has closed above 13,000, an all-time high is in sight — just 1,160 points away. But the path won't be smooth for the stock market or the economy. The Dow's final push above the milestone came from a report that Americans feel better about the economy than they have in a year. But other economic data Tuesday were more grim: Orders for big-ticket factory goods dropped by the most in three years, mainly because the government withdrew a key tax subsidy.

The reputation that Jamie Dimon honed for decades on Wall Street has been severely damaged in a matter of days. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was the protege of banking industry legend Sanford Weill. In the early 2000s, he took over Bank One, an institution few believed was fixable, and restored it to a profit. And in 2008 and 2009, at JPMorgan Chase, Dimon built a fortress strong enough to stay profitable during the financial crisis. His zeal for cost-cutting and perceived mastery of risk did more than keep JPMorgan strong enough to bail out two...

Robert B. Reich wants you to know it’s not your fault. The monstrous credit card bills, the house you couldn’t afford, the home equity you blew on cars, vacations, and big-screen TVs. Not your fault. You couldn’t help it. The rich made you do it. This, believe it or not, is one of Reich’s arguments as he explores the causes of the economic crisis in “Aftershock.’’ If you’re a middle-class American seeking absolution for living beyond your means, or an MSNBC fan who can’t get enough eat-the-rich populism, this book is for you. ...

The White House says President Barack Obama urged decisive action to resolve Europe's financial crisis during calls Monday with the leaders of Britain and France. Obama spoke separately with British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The White House says the three leaders agreed to coordinate closely in the run-up to a European Union summit later this month and the G-20 summit in early November. The EU summit has been delayed to give leaders more time to finalize a plan to fight the worsening debt crisis.

WASHINGTON - Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said the slow recovery from the Great Recession and 2008 financial crisis illustrates how vulnerable the global economy is, while urging economic policy makers to learn from that lesson. The Federal Reserve chairman noted extraordinary steps taken by the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world to stabilize financial systems, during a conference on the crisis Friday. The Fed purchased more than $2 trillion in bonds in an effort to push long-term interest rates lower.

Brad Pitt is making the movie star thing look darn easy. Since he last collaborated with Andrew Dominik, he's starred in the Coen brothers' "Burn After Reading," David Fincher's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life," and Bennett Miller's "Moneyball. " It's been arguably the best stretch of his career, one vacillating between comedy and drama and defined not by summer blockbusters but by provocative director-oriented fare.

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators are reviewing what JPMorgan Chase told investors about its finances and the risks it took weeks before suffering a multibillion-dollar trading loss. Mary Schapiro, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, told the Senate Banking Committee Tuesday that the agency is examining JPMorgan's earnings statements and first-quarter financial reports to determine if they were ‘‘accurate and truthful. " Schapiro and Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said the $2...

Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today (times EDT): 1. EGYPT HOLDS ITS FIRST FREE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION The voting that began at 2 a.m. is the greatest prize won in last year's Arab Spring uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak. Egyptians are choosing among 13 candidates representing both secular and Islamist paths. 2. FINANCIAL REGULATORS PROBING FACEBOOK IPO They want to find out whether the bank that handled the sale, Morgan Stanley, selectively informed clients of an analyst's negative report on the company before the...

Brazil's finance minister is lowering the forecast for the South American country's economic growth this year, and he blames the global financial crisis. Finance Minister Guido Mantega says Brazil's gross domestic product is now expected to increase 4 percent during 2012, against a previous prediction of 4.5 percent growth. The latest weekly Brazilian Central Bank survey of private economists is forecasting even lower growth this year, putting it at 3.1 percent. Mantega says Brazil prospects have been hurt especially by Greece's debt crisis and the austerity...

The U.N. labor office says it expects 12.7 percent of youth globally to be unemployed in 2012 and the rate to remain "at the same high level" at least four more years. The International Labor Organization says nearly 75 million of those aged 15 to 24 are unemployed worldwide, up more than 4 million from 2007. The Geneva-based U.N. agency said in a report Tuesday that the youth unemployment rate, which stood at 12.6 percent in 2011, has "remained close to its crisis peak in 2009" at the height of the global financial crisis.

CAMP DAVID, Md. - Confronting an economic crisis that threatens them all, President Obama and leaders of other world powers declared on Saturday that their governments must both spark growth and cut the debt that has crippled the European continent and put investors worldwide on edge. "There's now an emerging consensus that more must be done to promote growth and job creation right now," Obama proclaimed after hosting unprecedented economic talks at Camp David, the presidential retreat.

Anger is an underrated response to a movie — not to be mad at a film, but to be mad with it. Charles Ferguson’s documentary “Inside Job,’’ about the recent financial catastrophe, is infuriating the way the best nonfiction filmmaking can be. The movie succeeds at upsetting you not by losing its cool, the way so many similar films do, but by slow-cooking its argument. Most of the film is focused on Manhattan. But the movie begins in Iceland the way New York disaster movies often start in a science lab, the woods, or outer space.

In his May 14 op-ed about the Export-Import Bank, " Pro-subsidy does not equal pro-business ," John E. Sununu chose rhetoric over facts. The Ex-Im Bank does not "bestow unique benefits to favored companies or industries. " We provide much-needed financing for businesses in dozens of industries exporting around the globe. More than 85 percent of our transactions last year were for more than 3,500 small US companies. And we do not "simply [give] money away. " The Ex-Im Bank's financing is not free.