Deloitte Partner—and Wife—Charged with Insider Trading

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(CNBC with Reuters) Wondering about the delayed vote? Note the following: "But after failing to nail down 14 votes among the commission's 18 members—a super-majority threshold set when the panel was created in February—they said they would wait until Friday to vote on the proposal." Place your bets now: Will the panel approve the proposal, and then recommend it to the full Congress for an up-or-down vote—or will it become yet another Washington debating society?

'Spanish Flu' Infects Italy and Belgium? Still Spreading? (New York Times) Begin with this data point: The euro is down. " Reflecting those worries, the euro slipped to $1.3008 at midafternoon in the United States from $1.3125 late Monday. As recently as Nov. 5, the euro traded above $1.40." Now take a look at this trend: "But what is worse for the European Union and an increasingly stretched International Monetary Fund is that investors have begun to disgorge some of their positions in Belgium, Italy and even Germany." Yes, you read the name of that last country correctly: Germany.

Goldman Coder Trial Opens (DealBook) The Time's DealBook asks: "Is Sergey Aleynikov an evil computer scientist who brazenly stole valuable, closely guarded trading code from Goldman Sachs, his former employer? Or is he a humble Russian immigrant who, upon leaving his programming post at Goldman for a higher-paying job, innocuously took some open-source code with him on his way out the door?" In either case, DealBook correctly points out that it will bring attention to the world of HFT (high-frequency trading). HFT is controversial — because of allegations of front running, and questions about whether all market participants have access to a level playing field in that space. If you're an HFT trader at a hedge fund you probably just want the case to go away.

Deloitte Partner—and Wife—Charged with Insider Trading (MarketWatch) "Deloitte Tax LLP partner Arnold McClellan and his wife Annabel, who live in San Francisco, were alleged by the SEC of providing advance notice of at least seven confidential acquisitions planned by Deloitte’s clients to Annabel’s sister and brother-in-law in London."

More Bond Purchases to Come from ECB? (Financial Times) no pruple "Jean-Claude Trichet, European Central Bank president, has left open the possibility of the bank significantly expanding its government bond purchases and warned markets not to underestimate Europe’s determination to resolve the escalating eurozone crisis. The hint that the ECB could recalibrate its response to the unfolding crisis came as the premiums that Italy and Spain pay over Germany benchmark interest rates hit fresh highs since the launch of the euro. The euro’s monetary guardian had already stepped up purchases of Portuguese bonds, traders reported." The Financial Times article then adds—in an curious final paragraph—the following addendum: "Mr Trichet has insisted repeatedly that the ECB is not engaged in 'quantitative easing' as it has withdrawn liquidity from the financial system equal to the amounts it has spent on bonds, neutralizing any inflationary risks. That policy would almost certainly continue under an expanded scheme." Interesting.

Commercial Bank Profit Margins Rising on Increased Deposits (Bloomberg) "Commercial banks in the U.S. added $88.9 billion of so-called core deposits in the third quarter, bringing the total to $6 trillion, the most since at least 1992, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Wells Fargo & Co., the fourth- largest lender by deposits and fifth-ranked U.S. Bancorp have said they’re competing for such funds, which include checking and savings accounts and time deposits of less than $100,000. "

JPMorgan Gets Hip to iPad (BusinessWeek via Bloomberg) "JPMorgan Chase & Co. will give its investment bankers iPads to provide an additional mobile tool as Apple Inc. expands its domain to Wall Street, threatening Research in Motion Ltd. in a market it traditionally dominated."