Wall Street Videos & News: Finance News: Wall Street // Current

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6 days ago

Goldman Sachs behind every market crash since 1920s

Goldman Sachs has played a crucial role in creating every market bubble since the 1920s -- and has profited from not only the... more

el_chivo
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U.S. recovery, Production to replace consumer and Wall street index ?

No sub-primes, where does the money come now ? Selling innovative products manufactured in the country and export them to the... more

Solarlife
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Guess Who's Selling Wall Street's Bull?

The strategic communications specialist advising a financial industry effort to enhance Wall Street's image has plenty of experience in spinning the American public: In the Bush White House, he was one of the aides in charge of the administration's fact-bending campaign to sell the Iraq War.

Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Jim Wilkinson, a one-time senior aide to former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, is part of a campaign, spearheaded by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), to quell the upsurge of "populist" anger directed at the financial sector. But the story leaves out an important part of his résumé: He's a GOP PR operative with a history of disseminating misleading information and once served as the deputy communications director in the Bush White House.

In the run-up to the Iraq War, Wilkinson was a member of the White House Iraq Group, which devised the administration's information offensive making the case for deposing Saddam Hussein. He played a key role in drafting "A Decade of Deception and Defiance," a white paper circulated in September 2002. The report outlined the myriad ways in which Saddam's regime had flouted international sanctions, along with its alleged pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and supposed links to terrorism. The paper, riddled with information that has since been debunked, relied in part on the claims of an Iraqi defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al Haideri, who had previously been deemed unreliable by intelligence officials. Nevertheless, the document was released to back up Bush's speech to the UN General Assembly on September 12, in which the president laid out a host of allegations against the Iraqi dictator. Among other things, Bush claimed, "Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon. Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year."

By November 2002 Wilkinson had been installed as Central Command's (CENTCOM) director of strategic communications, where he coordinated the administration's information campaigns on Afghanistan and Iraq. As the military's "Shock and Awe" campaign commenced in March, Wilkinson presided over press conferences at the military's forward base in Doha, Qatar, where reporters were fed a daily dose of spin and misinformation.

In an updated version of The First Casualty, a comprehensive account of journalism during wartime, Phillip Knightley writes that in Doha:

stories were floated, picked up, exaggerated, confirmed and then turned out to be wrong. Basra was secured—it fell seventeen days later. Um Quasa fell daily. Saddam Hussein had been killed; Tariq Assiz had defected—both stories were wrong. There was an uprising in Basra that never happened even though Central Command announced at a briefing that it had. Was this deliberate strategic disinformation?

Continued below . . .The strategic communications specialist advising a financial industry effort to enhance Wall Street's image has plenty of... more

pjacobs51
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17 days ago

Insiders Exit Shares at the Fastest Pace in 2 Years

June 22 (Bloomberg) -- Executives at U.S. companies are taking advantage of the biggest stock-market rally in 71 years to sell... more

Ihatethemall
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22 days ago

Green now a luxury as Obama unveils banking plans

The US government has announced a major reform of banking regulation to prevent future financial crises. Wall Street traders have... more

thestupidtimes
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25 days ago

Surprise,..AIG Is A Chinese Company That Our Government Gave $170 Billion(Taxpayer) To.

Does this constitute treason ? These were taxpayer dollars that went to a Chinese company. Wonder why ? The Chinese government... more

keithponder
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5 responses

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27 days ago

World's Largest Asset Management Firm formed from Barclays merger forming $2.7-trillion titan

Money management giant BlackRock Inc. late Thursday agreed to buy Barclays Global Investors -- including the iShares... more

jkw077
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27 days ago

Teaser For Untitled Michael Moore Bailout Doc

Here it is...

vistapoint
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14 responses

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28 days ago

Michael Moore's next target: Wall Street

"The movie is not going to be an economics lesson; it's going to be more like a vampire movie," the filmmaker... more

WakeUpPeople
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29 days ago

Michael Moore on Wall Street in next film

"The movie is not going to be an economics lesson; it's going to be more like a vampire movie," the filmmaker... more

vistapoint
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1 month ago

Chinese Luagh at Geithner for Saying Dollar "Assests Are Very Safe"

BEIJING, June 1 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Monday reassured the Chinese government that its huge... more

User00
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1 month ago

With Hollywood Sold, Imax Aims to Woo Wall St.

"Hollywood has finally come to view Imax as a star. Will Wall Street be the next convert?

Based in Mississauga, Ontario, Imax has struggled for more than a decade to be taken seriously in the film and finance capitals. Hollywood was turned off by Imax’s costly and clunky equipment for its large-format movies, not to mention the location of its theaters at science centers and history museums.

Investors have been even more cautious. Imax, buffeted by changes in ownership and regulatory inquiries into its accounting methods, has not turned a quarterly profit in three years. The company posted a $33.5 million loss for 2008, an 18 percent increase over the previous year.

While few people were looking, however, Imax has transformed itself.

The company still has a museum arm — “Hubble 3D” is the next release — but most of its attention these days is on the multiplex. The company now operates 250 commercial theaters around the world, a 40 percent increase over last year. Box office sales from Hollywood offerings increased 90 percent during the first quarter, to $29.9 million.

Paramount Pictures will bring “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” to Imax theaters in June, while Disney has committed to exhibit five of its coming titles with Imax, including an adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” and a live-action “Alice in Wonderland.” Fox has big Imax plans for “Avatar,” a 3-D thriller from the director James Cameron that is to open in December.

“We had to jump up and down to get noticed by the movie studios, but we are now clearly part of the mainstream experience,” said Richard L. Gelfond, Imax’s chief executive. He and his business partner, Bradley J. Wechsler, chairman of Imax, bought the company in 1994 in partnership with the investment banking firm Wasserstein Perella, which no longer has a stake.

Imax’s expansion to the multiplex has not come without controversy, though. Some consumers have complained that the company has taken advantage of moviegoers because it has been installing screens in multiplexes that are bigger than the standard variety but much smaller than the ones Imax operates at museums. The museum-size screens are the ones most people associate with the brand.""Hollywood has finally come to view Imax as a star. Will Wall Street be the next convert? Based in Mississauga, Ontario,... more

St_Alia_10191
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1 month ago

The Punk Patriot * I'm Not Mad at Obama. I'm Mad at You.

I'm Mad at you. Not you specifically. I like you.

asherp
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4 responses

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1 month ago

Leaving Wall Street

For the next three days, Anna Katharina Laggner, who is an Austrian journalist visiting WCBS Newsradio 880, will be presenting... more

ebindelglass
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1 month ago

Wall Street Time Bomb?

Or a misrepresentation by the pundits and spin-doctors? What really happened on wall street? Do we really need these jerks... more

asherp
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5 responses

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1 month ago

Geithner calls for 'very substantial' change in Wall Street pay

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner called for major changes in compensation practices at financial companies and said the Obama... more

singrrr
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14 responses

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1 month ago

Pew Poll notes Significant Rise in Independant Voters

For the past two years, centrism has dominated Americans' political views. That's the conclusion of the latest survey, released Thursday, from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Pew President Andy Kohut says the number of people reporting that they are political independents reached a 70-year high, but there was little movement regarding people's values. That's even though President Obama's election marked a watershed moment for the United States.

"Even though it was a big Democratic win and the Republicans are in free-fall, there's no sign of an ideological shift," Kohut tells NPR's Melissa Block. "Values are pretty much the same. It's not like the mid-'90s, when we were showing the public becoming more conservative, or the beginning of this decade, showing the public was more partisan. Public remains pretty much where it was two years ago on very basic values."

Of the independents surveyed, more described themselves as "leaning" Democratic than Republican (17 percent vs. 12 percent.) But in surveys conducted this year, 33 percent of independents described their views as conservative, up from 28 percent in 2007 and 26 percent in 2005, according to Pew.

Kohut says this just means that independent voters are "unbalanced centrists" — they tend to have conservative views about government and regulation, and more liberal views regarding the hot-button social issues, national security and religion, he says.

He also says African-Americans reported having a more positive view of American society than they did two years ago. Sixty-two percent of African Americans — vs. 40 percent two years ago — say the country can solve its problems, Kohut says.

"Among whites, there's an even larger percentage saying that African-Americans are making progress," he says.

But the biggest surprise for Kohut was people's attitudes toward business and the free market, and Wall Street. He says they haven't changed "all that much" in two years.

"The public continues to think that business is what continues to make this country successful," he says. "They are very reluctant about regulation. This is mostly the views of Republicans, but independents joined them in this perception — some Democrats, but less often Democrats."For the past two years, centrism has dominated Americans' political views. That's the conclusion of the latest survey,... more