The Flash Crash — when Wall Street dropped hundreds of points last week in just minutes — has raised concerns of how dangerous high-frequency trading is. How can we prevent a crash from happening again?
Wall Street

Still no news on why or how the Flash Crash happened
The US market authorities and the various exchanges still can’t tell the world just what caused the Great Crash of 2.45pm on May 6. Was it “Fat Finger”, a computer glitch or perhaps something deeper?
The fickle, fat finger of fate puts the Dow into down
It was a terrible day for a stupid US stock market trader to make a mistake: in just 10 minutes, stupidity wiped about $US1 trillion from the value of Wall Street.
rumour
Was the stock market crash caused by a typo?
The Dow plunged 1000 points last night. But it may not have been triggered by the Greece crisis — Wall St insiders say the whole thing may have been caused by a trader entering a “b” for billion, instead of an “m” for million, during a trade.
Fabulous Fab: the most popular man on Wall St
Goldman’s Fabrice Tourre may be public enemy number one with the American public over his role in the company’s mortgage trading scandal, but on Wall St, he commands a dedicated cult following. Just what makes him so fab?
PHOTO GALLERY: The most corrupt US industries
Wall St may get the headlines, but it isn’t the most corrupt industry (well, okay, it did come second). Daily Beast put together the list with a global anti-corruption think tank, putting the media as more corrupt than mining.
Dear Main St: We will eat you alive. Love, Wall St.
This email, allegedly written by a “Wall Street trader” to the rest of America is doing the rounds of the Street today: “What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours.”
exposed
Lehman’s debt mule
Lehman Brothers ran an “alter ego” company called Hudson Castle to hide its risky subprime mortgage investments for years before its collapse, the New York Times reveals.
Meet the man who controls US $12 trillion
Few people have heard of him, but Larry Fink is CEO of BlackRock, the largest money management firm in the world. It controls and monitors funds, from Fortune 500 companies to the sovereign-wealth of Singapore.
Business As Usual: US consumer confidence takes a dip … News moves into Middle East
US consumer confidence takes a fall as do US house prices, too. But Wall Street cash is still good even though the banks are still struggling and other business snippets of the day.
How a “mediocre stockbroker” conned Merrill Lynch
The story of Steven Mandala, who got a job with investment bank Merrill Lynch, talked them into giving him a $780,000 loan on his first day, bought a Ferrari and went AWOL.
How Goldman helped Greece hide its debt
The NYT exposes how Goldman Sachs and other Wall St players helped European governments hide their mounting debts for years, using tactics “akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America”.
CIA agents are moonlighting on Wall St
The CIA is allowing its agents to earn some extra cash by working for private companies on the side, with many offering their special skills as “human lie detectors” to help financial firms and hedge funds get an edge on the stock market.
US Fed boss Bernanke: will he stay or will he go?
Sending Fed boss Ben Bernanke packing would see a sell-off in markets (the US dollar would be pummelled, as would US stocks)
Leave the poor (well, rich…) bankers alone!
It’s time for the commoners to get over the whole Wall Street bankers earning bajillions in bonuses issue, writes Steven Pearlstein. If we’re going to get mad at bankers, we need to be mad at rock stars and athletes as well.
revealed
The FBI’s Wall St mole
The WSJ reveals the identity and story of a senior Wall Street trader who worked undercover for the FBI — wire and all — for over a year to help uncover the biggest insider-trading case in twenty years.
OK, so we can’t see the woods for the trees
Looking at the sad stories about the global economy, the only way most baby boomers will leave the workforce voluntarily will be in pine boxes (probably made in China), writes David Hirst.
Wall St bankers explain their stuff ups
The NY Times has a nifty interactive feature on the four big bankers who headed to Capitol Hill to testify at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Hear in their own words how hurricanes, regulators, risk and overspending of mortgages all contributed to causing the GFC.
Bailouts, banks and Bernanke: Wall Street’s biggest lies
From declaring the economy as “better” to Citigroup being too-big-to-fail, AlterNet puts together the top ten greatest fibs that Wall Street told the public this year.
The noughties: the decade that sucked
The last ten years have been pretty crap for Americans and the US economy, says Paul Krugman. There was zero job creation, zero gain for home owners and zero gain for stocks. Will the next decade be any better?
VIDEO: Star Wars: the stock market strikes back
The New York Stock Exchange is opened by Darth Vader and a team of Storm Troopers. Yes, great way to reform your image, Wall Street.
graph pr0n
10 years of stock market suffering
The WSJ illustrates its bold assertion that the 2000s were the stock market’s “worst decade ever” with a range of interactive graphs to hammer home the point.
Wall Street: Worst. Decade. Ever.
The Wall Street Journal has boldly declared the 2000s the stock market’s “worst decade ever” in its 200 years of recorded history — yep, even worse than the ’30s. Ouch.










