The rhetoric of anger at the one percent can be marshalled with equal fervor by both the right and the left. Being angry at the establishment isn't the same as agreeing on how to change things.
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Photograph by Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
Union Square in New York on May 1, 2012, a last hurrah for Occupy Wall Street.
What Happened to the Great Wealth Debate?
The Many Loves of Ken Langone
When it comes to Kenneth Langone and the titans of finance, there is rarely a shortage of affection. Take Jamie Dimon. "I love Jamie, I know him well personally," Langone declared, "I love him."
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Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
The lights of Canary Wharf, kept on, perhaps, by bankers working late to justify their bonuses.
$2 Million Bonuses Do Nothing For Performance. Europe Is Finally Killing Them.
There's a compensation tool that accomplishes almost everything we want from incentives. It comes at the end of a year of good performance. It encourages employees to stay longer to realize its full benefit . It is the "raise."
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Photographer:Alex Cid-Fuentes/Bloomberg News
After all the criticism, Bank of America may have tamed the Merrill Lynch bull after all.
Despite the Bonus Fiasco, Maybe Merrill Was a Good Buy
When Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch, investors sliced off $32 billion of the bank's market cap, and things got worse from there. Now that deal doesn't look so bad.
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Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
An anti-foreclosure demonstration outside Fannie Mae headquarters.
Fannie and Freddie, the $5 Trillion Gorillas the U.S. Just Can’t Kill
If there's such a thing as too big to fail, no one qualifies more clearly than Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Unfortunately, splitting them up won't get government out of the loan guarantee business. Smaller companies in the subprime industry...
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Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Senator Carl Levin at the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing on the JPMorgan Chase & Co. "whale trades."
‘It’s Becoming Idiotic,’ the Senate’s Riveting Story of the London Whale
The U.S. Senate report on JPMorgan's $6.2 billion loss makes it clear that Bruno Iksil, aka the London Whale, wasn't just anxious about his position long before it became public. Despondent and terrified is more like it.
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Photographer: Price Chambers/Bloomberg
Mountain ranges like the Grand Tetons took millennia to grow to their present size. Wall Street bonuses? More like 25 years.
The Reason Wall Street Got So Rich, In Two Charts
The average New York City securities industry bonus went up eight percent last year, to $121,890. Surprised? Didn't think so. Wall Street has been climbing for 25 years. The chart here shows you why.
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Photographer: David Calvert/Bloomberg
The tracks in the Nevada snow? Underwater homeowners walking away from their homes.
Five Years Late, Walkaways Get a $133 Break
Under new rules, Fannie and Freddie won't try to collect "deficiency judgement," pursuing home owners for the remaining debt on houses they've walked away from. Sounds like a generous move. It's not.
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Photographer: Jonathan Ernst/Bloomberg
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon at Senate hearings prompted by the bank's trading loss.
From the Belly of JPMorgan, a Closer View of the Whale Trade
In JPMorgan's report , a more nuanced picture of traders emerges than the usual idea of cowboys taking crazy risks. It shows a trader very worried about his position, and pushed deeper in by superiors.
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Photographer: Chip Chipman/Bloomberg
Like some of Wall Street's clients, salmon return to their spawning grounds, where they are caught and smoked.
Where Bad Ideas Return to Spawn
A perfect study in Wall Street 's Law of Eternal Return: as Fed buying ends and mortgages slip, property-backed CDOs -- pools of sliced and diced mortgage loans -- are suddenly back.
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