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JPMorgan Chase’s multi-billion dollar trading blunder dragged down bank stocks Friday, undermining investor confidence in other Wall Street finance firms.
JPMorgan (, Fortune 500) led the bank stock declines, with its stock dropping nearly 9%.
The bank revealed Thursday, after the close of markets, that it suffered trading losses of $2 billion since the start of April.
The problems affected other major bank stocks. Morgan Stanley (, Fortune 500), Citigroup (, Fortune 500) and Goldman Sachs (, Fortune 500) fell about 4%. Bank of America (, Fortune 500) declined less than 2% and Wells Fargo (, Fortune 500) managed to eke out modest gains, recovering from earlier losses.
JPMorgan suffers massive trading loss
"The problem is that there’s going to be a massive backlash," said Christopher Wheeler, bank analyst for Mediobanca in London.
Wheeler mentioned that the debacle was unfolding amid an ongoing debate over the Volcker Rule, which limits banks on investing with their money.
"The regulators are going to have a field day," he said guaranteed online personal loans.
Bank stocks were already under siege. The KBW () index of bank stocks has fallen 1.7% over the last five trading sessions, without even showing the impact of JPMorgan’s bad trade. On Friday, the index was down about 1%.
Who is the White Whale?
The trade prompted an unusual impromptu teleconference with Chief Executive Jamie Dimon and analysts, at which he divulged that net losses could exceed $800 million by the end of the second quarter for the company’s corporate unit. Before that announcement, a net gain of $200 million was forecast for the unit.
Dimon told analysts that the losing trades were the result of "sloppiness" and "bad judgment," but he shrugged off a question about whether other banks were affected.
"Just because we’re stupid doesn’t mean everyone else was," said Dimon on the call.
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Ralcorp Holdings will restate its full-year 2011 and first quarter 2012 earnings related to an impairment charge from the spin-off of its Post brand cereal business that was understated.
St. Louis-based Ralcorp said today that a previously disclosed $364.8 million non-cash goodwill impairment charge related to the Post spin-off was understated by about $54 million that should have been reflected in its fourth quarter 2011 earnings report. The Post cereal business was spun off as a separate company effective Feb. 3.
Ralcorp said it is delaying the release of its second quarter 2012 earnings, which was set for May 8 payday loans in one hour. The company’s second quarter results will be released instead on May 15, and the company will hold a conference call on May 16 to discuss the results.
Ralcorp’s private label foods include cereal, pasta, crackers, cookies, frozen biscuits and other frozen bread products.
Ukan Nang Ati, 48, used to scrape a living growing opium in the isolated countryside behind the village of Kyauk Ka Chan in Myanmar
The U.S. economy expanded less than forecast in the first quarter as a smaller contribution from inventories overshadowed the biggest gain in consumer spending in more than a year.
Gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced in the U.S., rose at a 2.2 percent annual rate after a 3 percent pace, Commerce Department figures showed yesterday in Washington. The median projection of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a 2.5 percent gain. Government spending fell for a sixth straight quarter.
Job creation and income gains propelled sales at car dealerships and retailers like Target Corp. (TGT), helping cushion the U.S. economy from weakness overseas. Further gains in consumer spending will depend on progress in reducing a jobless rate that has hovered above 8 percent since early 2009.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said she has received pledges worth about $320 billion so far in her campaign for a bigger reserve to combat threats to global growth.
Egypt’s election commission disqualified 10 presidential hopefuls, including Hosni Mubarak’s former spy chief and fundamentalist Islamists, from running Saturday in a surprise decision that left a field of moderates in the race for the country’s first post-revolutionary leader.
The elimination of the three most powerful and controversial candidates could go in two directions with just weeks to go before the vote, observers said. It could plunge the Arab world’s most populous nation into a new political crisis, or just the opposite, defuse it.
Farouk Sultan, the head of the Supreme Presidential Election Commission that was appointed by Egypt’s military rulers to oversee the vote, said that those barred from the contest included Mubarak-era strongman Omar Suleiman, Muslim Brotherhood chief strategist Khairat el-Shater and hard-line Islamist Hazem Abu Ismail. He did not give reasons.
Disqualified candidates have 48 hours to appeal the decision, according to election rules. The final list of candidates will be announced on April 26.
The announcement came as a shock to many Egyptians as three of the 10 excluded were considered among the front-runners in a highly polarized campaign that has left the nation divided behind two strong camps: Islamists and former regime insiders who are allegedly supported by the ruling generals.
Thirteen others had their candidacy approved, including former Arab League chief Amr Moussa, moderate Islamist Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh and former prime minister and Mubarak-era minister Ahmed Shafiq, according to Sultan.
If upheld, the decision would reshape the electoral landscape by removing the most powerful and controversial candidates and leaving moderates such as Abolfotoh, an ex-Muslim Brotherhood leader who has been trying to project crossover appeal for both religious conservatives and liberals, and Moussa, who was a member of the old regime but is popular among middle class Egyptians and who is not so closely associated with it.
The presidential election is due on May 23-24, with a possible runoff on June 16-17. The winner will be announced on June 21, less than two weeks before the July 1 deadline promised by the military rulers who took over after Mubarak to hand over power.
Abu Ismail, a lawyer-turned-preacher whose eligibility had come under scrutiny in recent weeks over the question of whether his late mother had dual Egyptian-U.S. citizenship, accused the military rulers who assumed power after Mubarak’s ouster of trying to manipulate the race from behind the scenes and warned his followers would not stay silent.
“You will drown, God willing, because you are in showdown with the people, because you are playing with fire,” he said in an interview with the Islamist TV network Al-Hakma.
Abu Ismail has led the most aggressive campaign so far. On the eve of the announcement, hundreds of his supporters surrounded the election commission’s headquarters in Cairo, forcing Sultan and his employees to evacuate under the military protection.
A new election law passed after Mubarak’s ouster bars an individual from running if the candidate, the candidate’s spouse or parents hold any citizenship other than Egyptian, and the commission had ordered the Interior Ministry to provide evidence showing whether Abu Ismail’s mother was officially documented in Egypt as having dual U.S. -Egyptian citizenship.
A spokesman for el-Shater’s campaign, Murad Mohammed Ali, also called the decision “very dangerous” and said it gives a message that “there was no revolution in Egypt no checking account payday advance.”
The Muslim Brotherhood fielded the head of its political arm Mohammed Morsi as a back-up candidate last week, fearing that el-Shater would be disqualified on the grounds that his records were not entirely cleared after serving time in prison in connection with his banned political activity under Mubarak. His lawyers say the ruling generals had dropped the charges. Morsi was not disqualified.
Despite the fiery rhetoric and promises from those disqualified to appeal, some Egyptians welcomed the news.
“This is much better,” said Ahmed Khalil, a spokesman of the liberal Free Egyptians party, which was not fielding a candidate. “These three candidates were holding extremist ideologies or holding an intelligence agenda.”
The announcement was the latest twist in an already convulated political scene as the nation struggles to redefine itself and navigate a difficult transition to civilian rule.
In the last two weeks, a court suspended the work of an Islamist-dominated, 100-member panel tasked with drafting a new constitution on the grounds its makeup violated the spirit of the interim charter that governed its formation.
Islamists as well as the largely liberal and secular activists who spearheaded the protests that led to Mubarak’s ouster had hoped to have a new constitution in place before the election in order to curtail the powers of the president after nearly three decades of autocratic rule.
The Muslim Brotherhood _ which along with hard-line ultraconservative Salafis captured more than 70 percent of the parliament seats in the first post-revolutionary elections _ announced on March 31 that el-Shater would run for president.
That reversed an earlier pledge not to seek the office and came after weeks of complaints by the Brotherhood that the parliament they control is toothless and that the ruling military was preventing it from forming a government.
In what was seen as a countermove backed by the generals, Suleiman made an unexpected announcement a week later that he was entering the race for the presidential elections. Suleiman said he had decided to run to block Islamist rule and provide stability after more than a year of turmoil.
A judge close to the commission, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to disclose the information, said that Suleiman has not presented the proper number of endorsements. Each candidate needed at least 30,000 endorsements, including at least 1,000 from each of the country’s 15 provinces, to join the race.
His campaign spokesman Mohammed Mishal promised to present extra endorsements that have not been used, giving him a gateway to re-enter the race.
Another campaign spokeswoman Reem Mamdouh said in an interview with the local CBC television network that they had not been officially notified about the decisions but would definite appeal.
“Suleiman will never withdraw and let down the hopes of the large constituency of Egyptians who supported him. This is not happening,” she said.
Ayman Nour, a liberal presidential hopeful, said the commission told him he was disqualified because of his imprisonment as a dissident under Mubarak’s regime and because his name was not listed among registered voters.
He also promised to appeal, saying the decision was “politicized as the whole race is deeply politicized.”
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Hospital operator Tenet Healthcare Corp. has agreed to pay $42.8 million to resolve allegations it overbilled Medicare for the treatment of patients who needed intense inpatient rehabilitation.
The Dallas company said today that the settlement resolves inquiries by the U.S. Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia.
The allegations involve the admission of patients at 25 facilities from May 2005 to December 2007. No information was immediately available on whether any of the facilities were in the St. Louis area, where Tenet operates two medical centers: Des Peres and St. Louis University hospitals.
The Justice Department said Tenet billed Medicare for patients who did not meet the standards for admission to inpatient rehab facilities. Medicare pays those facilities at a higher rate because patients require more difficult rehabilitation and more medical supervision than patients at other types of facilities no faxing pay day loans.
The Justice Department said it was the single largest U.S. recovery to date involving inappropriate inpatient rehab admissions.
Tenet said it already set aside money to cover the settlement and will make the payment in the second quarter.
The company said it now operates only eight inpatient rehabilitation centers. It also runs 50 hospitals and around 100 outpatient health centers.
Tenet said it identified overpayments at one facility in Georgia in 2007, and disclosed those payments to the government.
Shares of Tenet Healthcare Corp. fell 14 cents, or 2.7 percent, to $4.97 in midday trading Tuesday. Its shares have traded in a 52-week range of $3.46 to $7.56 per share.
Stocks pulled back sharply as Wall Street got its first chance to react to a slowdown in hiring in the United States in March.
The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 136 points to 12,923 in the first half-hour of trading. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was off 17 at 1,381, and the Nasdaq composite lost 40 points to 3,040.
The losses were broad _ only 13 stocks in the S&P 500 rose. Financial stocks fell the most. Bank of America was off 3 percent, Citigroup 2.5 percent.
The U.S. added just 120,000 jobs in March, about half the pace from December through February. The slowdown interrupted the strongest stretch of job growth since the Great Recession. The government released its jobs report on Friday, but the stock market was closed.
The stock market had already started to pull back from its strongest first quarter since 1998. The Dow closed as high as 13,264 earlier last week, then lost more than 200 points in three days.
Even before the job number came out, investors were worried that the Federal Reserve does not appear inclined to take further steps to stimulate the economy.
This week, investors will turn their attention to first-quarter corporate earnings reports. Aluminum maker Alcoa releases its results Tuesday, becoming the first company among the 30 in the Dow to do so. Two major banks, JPMorgan Chase and Well Fargo, report on Friday.
Analysts are expecting quarterly earnings to decline slightly compared with a year earlier. That would break a streak of nine straight quarters of earnings growth since 2009.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.04 percent from 2.06 percent Friday.
In other corporate news:
_ AOL shot up 44 percent after the company agreed to sell hundreds of patents and patent applications to Microsoft for a little more than $1 billion. The company plans to return some of the cash to shareholders.
_ Avon fell 3 percent after the struggling beauty products company named a former executive at Johnson & Johnson, Sherilyn S. McCoy, to be its CEO. She starts April 23.
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