Wall Street | featured news

Steady earnings growth on Wall Street could embolden the lawmakers and regulators who want to overhaul the banking system.

The Federal Reserve says it may start dialing back asset purchases this summer, but Wall Street doesn't seem worried Wednesday with stocks flying Wednesday and driving the major averages to fresh nominal highs.

The U.S. Senate on Monday confirmed former federal prosecutor Mary Jo White as the new head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency tasked with policing Wall Street and writing new rules of the road for financial markets.

Ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc trader Matthew Marshall Taylor has turned himself in to federal authorities in connection with charges that he defrauded the Wall Street bank out of $118 million in 2007, two sources familiar with the matter said.

The only winners in the financial crisis that brought Detroit to the brink of state takeover are Wall Street bankers who reaped more than $474 million from a city too poor to keep street lights working.

EBay Inc reported holiday quarter results that just beat Wall Street expectations, but the e-commerce company also gave a cautious forecast for 2013. EBay shares climbed 1.7 percent to $53.80 in after-hours trading following the announcement. Expectations were high ahead of the results because sales data from outside sources suggested strong sales growth from eBay's online marketplace and a solid increase in transactions processed by the company's PayPal payments business.

After Mary Miller, a senior Treasury Department official, removed her name from consideration, Sallie L. Krawcheck, a long-time Wall Street executive, has emerged as a potential front-runner to head the Securities and Exchange Commission.

With large portions of lower Manhattan still dark early Tuesday, U.S. stock exchanges said they were testing contingency plans to ensure trading resumes as soon as possible this week after Hurricane Sandy smashed into the East Coast.
U.S. markets will be closed for a second day, but the New York Stock Exchange said that despite reports that its historic trading floor suffered irreparable damage, no such damage has occurred and that contingency plans are being tested only as a safety measure.

Stocks got a boost on Wall Street from positive economic news on Monday. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 135 points to 13,572 in the first hour of trading. The market was already higher in the opening minutes of trading, then jumped at 10 a.m. after the Institute for Supply Management reported that U.S. manufacturing grew in September for the first time in four months.

The 2008 financial crisis roiled the banking system and swamped the global economy, leaving millions of Americans jobless, underemployed or facing foreclosure. In its wake, Congress set out to overhaul how the government oversees Wall Street. The result was a sprawling law, the Dodd-Frank Act, which aims to prevent future crises by giving the government new tools and restricting banks' activities. The law may make future crises less likely, but it increases costs for companies, especially banks, and their customers.