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    Ryan McCarthy

    Ryan McCarthy

    Contributor

  • 'No Doubt The Economy Has Slowed'

    WASHINGTON: Corporate profits contracted in the first quarter for the first time in more than two years and the economy grew at the same pedestrian pace as previously estimated, government data showed on Thursday. Signs of the economy's struggle to regain speed were highlighted by an unexpected rise in the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits last week. After-tax corporate profits fell at a rate of 0.9 percent, the Commerce Department said, after rising at a 3.3 percent pace in the fourth quarter.

  • Feds' Oil Manipulation Lawsuits Are 'Rubbish,' Shipping Magnate Says

    Shipping magnate John Fredriksen said U.S. regulator lawsuits against two of his trading firms for suspected oil price manipulation in 2008 were "rubbish," a Norwegian newspaper reported on Thursday. Dagens Naeringsliv quoted Fredriksen as saying that his traders did not do anything that others were not doing and that suggested that U.S. President Barack Obama was trying to score easy points by going after his companies. U.S. regulators on Tuesday launched one of the biggest ever crackdowns on oil price manipulation, suing two well-known traders and two trading firms owned by Fredriksen for allegedly making $50 million by squeezing markets.

  • U.S. Should Raise Interest Rates, OECD Says

    The Federal Reserve should begin to hike interest rates in coming months, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said on Wednesday, as it raised its outlook for U.S. economic growth. In its semi-annual forecast, the OECD said it sees U.S. economic growth of 2.6 percent in 2011, up from its forecast last November for growth of just 2.2 percent. The outlook, however, is much lower than the Fed's own "central tendency" estimates, which as of April 27 pegged growth for this year in the 3.1 percent to 3.3 percent range.

  • EU Crisis Could Infect U.S., Fed Official Warns

    Turmoil over sovereign debt problems in Europe could weigh on the U.S. economic recovery, St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard said on Monday. "I am concerned about the situation in Europe," Bullard told reporters after a speech. Uncertainty in Europe is one reason why U.S. longer-term bond yields have dropped, Bullard said, as investors move into less risky assets.

  • SEC Probing Whether Banks Overcharged Customers For Trades

    The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is probing whether two major banks made proper representations to pension-fund clients about how their currency trades would be handled and priced, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. The Journal said the probe is examining the currency trading activities of the two of the world's largest custody banks, State Street Corp and Bank of New York Mellon, and whether the banks misrepresented how they intended to carry out the foreign exchange trades. Foreign exchange traditionally has been a rich source of revenue for U.S. banks, particularly custodial banks, which not only profit from buying international stocks and bonds for pension funds and other investors, but also on trading dollars into other currencies.

  • BofA To Pay Hundreds Of Millions For Overcharging Customers

    Bank of America Corp has won tentative approval of a $410 million settlement of lawsuits accusing it of charging excessive overdraft fees to roughly 1 million customers. U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King in Miami granted preliminary approval for the accord on Monday and scheduled a November 7 hearing to consider final approval, court records show. Bank of America, the largest U.S. bank by assets, is among more than two dozen U.S., Canadian and European lenders that had been named as defendants in the class-action litigation, which in 2009 consolidated lawsuits filed across the country.

  • Sony To Post Huge Loss For The Year

    Sony Corp said it expected to post a $3.2 billion net loss for the year that ended on March 31 due to a write off on tax credits, the latest in a string of grim headlines for the consumer electronics giant. The maker of PlayStation video games, Vaio computers and Bravia TVs has been battling to recover from the devastating Japan earthquake in March, and more recently, a series of computing hacking attacks that affected more than 100 million user accounts. "I have been skeptical about Sony for a long time.

  • JPMorgan CEO: U.S. Debt Default Would Be A 'Moral Disaster'

    "It will dwarf Lehman," Dimon said, referring to the 2008 collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers, which contributed to the beginning of a global financial crisis. Dimon's comments came in response to a question about the federal deficit from moderator Tom Petrie, a vice chairman of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Dimon got a standing ovation at the dinner, a marked contrast to JPMorgan's annual meeting in Ohio on Tuesday, when more than 400 demonstrators shouted outside.

  • IMF Culture Like 'Pirates Of The Caribbean,' Women On Guard

    What may draw even more attention to the culture of the fund is the revelation of an affair involving a potential successor to Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who resigned as managing director on Wednesday. Kemal Dervis of Turkey had a liaison while working at the World Bank years ago with a woman who now works at the I.M.F., according to a person with direct knowledge of the relationship.

  • After $15B Loss, Chief Of Japan Nuclear Firm Resigns

    Tokyo Electric Power Co reported a $15 billion net loss on Friday to account for the disaster at its Fukushima nuclear plant, marking the biggest loss in Japan by a non-financial company and prompting the firm to warn its future was uncertain. Much-criticized president, Masataka Shimizu, 66, resigned to take responsibility for the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986, making way for an insider, managing director Toshio Nishizawa, 60. Engineers are battling to plug radiation leaks and bring the plant northeast of Tokyo under control more than two months after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and deadly tsunami that devastated a swathe of Japan's coastline and tipped the economy into recession.

  • Most Fed Officials Want To Raise Rates Before Selling Assets

    Most Federal Reserve officials prefer to raise benchmark interest rates before selling assets when the time comes to tighten policy, minutes of their April meeting showed on Wednesday. During an extensive discussion of how the central bank might pull back its massive support for the world's largest economy, officials agreed they would eventual shrink the Fed's much expanded portfolio over the medium term, and that getting rid of mortgage-related debt would be a priority. "A majority of participants preferred that sales of agency securities come after the first increase in the (Fed's) target for short-term interest rates," the Fed said.

  • Soros Dumps His Entire Stake Of Gold

    NEW YORK/BOSTON (By Frank Tang and Aaron Pressman) - Billionaire financier George Soros, who called gold "the ultimate bubble," dumped almost his entire $800 million stake in bullion in the first quarter, well before a commodities slump blamed partly on reports he was liquidating his holdings. Famed gold bull John Paulson held his ground, but Soros was joined in the retreat by several other big names, including Eric Mindich and Paul Touradji, according to 13-F filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that provide the best insight into where hedge funds are placing their bets. Soros, who has been bullish on gold in the past several years, cut his holdings in the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD.P: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) to just $6.9 million by the end of first quarter, compared with $655 million in December, becoming the most high-profile investors to turn his back on one of the market's best-performing assets.

  • NY AG Investigating Big Banks' Mortgage Operations

    New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating big banks like Bank of America Corp, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs related to packaging of toxic mortgage loans into securities, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources. The Attorney General will hold meetings with bank executives and has requested related documents from the firms, the Journal said. Huffington Post on Monday reported the inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development has concluded that Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial defrauded the government in seeking reimbursements for mortgages on properties they improperly foreclosed upon.

  • Officials Agree On Huge Portugal Bailout Package

    European finance ministers on Monday signed off on euro 78 billion ($110 billion) in rescue loans to Portugal to give the debt-ridden country time to overhaul its economy. One-third of the package will be financed by other eurozone states, another third will come from a fund backed by the EU budget, and the International Monetary Fund will contribute the final euro26 billion, the ministers said in a statement from Brussels, where they were meeting. The statement also said that the Portuguese authorities agreed to "encourage" private investors to maintain their exposure to the country "on a voluntary basis" and not pull out funds.

  • Fed Probe Ford Freestyle Over Dangerous Steering

    Federal safety officials are investigating complaints that the Ford Freestyle crossover vehicle can lunge unexpectedly when driving at low speeds or idling. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it has received 238 complaints involving 2005 through 2007 Freestyles. Eighteen minor crashes were reported with one minor injury.

  • NO DEAL: NASDAQ Won't Buy NYSE

    NEW YORK: Nasdaq OMX Group Inc and IntercontinentalExchange are withdrawing their bid for rival exchange NYSE Euronext, saying it became clear they would not win approval for the deal from the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust division. NYSE Euronext shares fell nearly 11 percent in premarket trading. Nasdaq and ICE first offered to buy the New York Stock Exchange's parent on April 1, seeking to thwart NYSE Euronext's proposed friendly merger with Deutsche Boerse AG, worth $10.2 billion when it was announced in February.

  • Jim Cramer: The Old Me Would Have Hit Jon Stewart With A Chair

    Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC's Mad Money and a former hedge fund manager, is never one for biting his tongue. Over two years later, thoughts of the interview continue to get a rise out of Cramer. “The old me would have hit Stewart with a chair.

  • U.S. Default Would Cost 640k Jobs, Kill Stocks, Report Finds

    The United States could plunge back into recession if inaction in Washington forced a debt default, according to a new analysis that arrives as the country reaches the legal limits of its borrowing authority. Some 640,000 U.S. jobs would vanish, the housing market's woes would deepen, stocks would fall and lending activity would tighten if the country were unable to pay its bills, according to a report by the centrist think tank Third Way due out on Monday. The Treasury Department is expected to hit its $14.3 trillion borrowing limit on Monday, making it unable to access the bond markets again.

  • Cisco To Cut Thousands Of Jobs In Its Biggest Layoffs In History

    Cisco Systems Inc is expected to cut thousands of jobs in possibly its worst-ever round of layoffs to meet Chief Executive John Chambers' goal of slashing costs by $1 billion. Cisco's previous record layoffs was set in fiscal 2002, when the company shed some 2,000 jobs, according to Canaccord Genuity analyst Paul Mansky. Thus, some of the layoffs are expected to come from businesses that Cisco pulls out of in coming months.

  • Higher Gas Costs Drag Down Retail Sales

    The economy struggled to gain momentum early in the second quarter, with retail sales posting their smallest rise in nine months in April and wholesale prices increasing more than expected. Retail sales increased 0.5 percent after an upwardly revised 0.9 percent gain in March as receipts at gasoline stations and grocery stores rose strongly, the Commerce Department said. Excluding gasoline, retail sales rose 0.2 percent.