Treasury secretary Timothy Geitner defended the cornerstones of the administration’s financial regulation plan at a meeting of the House Financial Services committee on Friday morning. The Federal Reserve is to have certain of its functions taken over by a new consumer protection agency, while...

Investors are betting that strength in banks will flow to the rest of the economy. Rising financial stocks are pulling the market higher Monday after an influential banking analyst raised her rating on Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which reports earnings Tuesday. Analyst Meredith Whitney said on CNBC that...

Optimism in June has become gloom in July. The rise of oil to $72.68 a barrel in June has retreated over the last couple of weeks to a price under $60.00 on Thursday, July 9, as traders and investors have acknowledged that a global economic recovery is going to take longer than hoped. By the end of this...

The resilience of the global microfinance industry will be put to the test by the economic crisis, according to a new survey of the risks to this business. Far from being insulated from the economic mainstream, as traditionally thought, microfinance could face a fall in growth and funding because of...

European banks may follow UBS and take advantage of improved investor appetite to top up capital and please regulators but they are not under the same intense pressure as the world’s largest wealth manager. UBS is selling $3.5 billion of shares, saying it would suffer a second-quarter loss. Its...

Having suffered the worst thrashing the equities market has absorbed in two months, in Monday’s selloff, Wall Street, on Tuesday, adopted a defensive posture, eschewing any sharp moves and evidencing none of the volatility that characterized Monday’s downturn. In short, Wall Street played possum.  To...

Treasury secretary Timothy Geitner went before the Senate banking committee on Thursday to explain the administrations plans on financial regulation, and was greeted with much skepticism. There is a great deal of criticism of the proposed regulations by not only congressional members, but throughout...

Citigroup (C Quote) and Bank of America (BAC Quote) are going to take time before they can become good investments for  the U.S. government. Paper losses run $3 billion and $2.2 billion respectively, based on the original strike price for the preferred shares bought by the U.S. Treasury and yesterday’s...

NEW YORK, June 8 (Reuters) – Citigroup Inc expects to begin its much-delayed $58 billion stock swap later this week, as part of a plan that could leave the government with a 34 percent stake. The third-largest U.S. bank said on Monday it is conducting the swap to bolster capital in the wake of...

Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued an order on Monday which could possibly put Chrysler at risk of going out of business. The Justice’s action amounts to a holding action of Chrysler’s impeding bankruptcy. Three Indiana state funds and various consumer groups have objected to Chrysler’s...