At a London news conference on Monday, Elmer, former chief of the office of the Julius Baer Bank in the Cayman Islands, handed to Assange what he said were two discs containing information on about 2,000 offshore banking clients.

Assange said WikiLeaks would treat the information provided… [Read the full story...]

Goldman Sachs’s decision to offer shares of Facebook only to offshore investors is simple risk management. The risk here can be attributable to the scrutiny that this transaction, and Goldman Sachs generally, are now under.

[Read the full story...]

Budgets need balancing.

That was the message the new Cook County Board president conveyed last week to fellow elected officials of the county’s 9th District.

Board President Toni Preckwinkle on Friday was in the district at the invitation of Commissioner Peter Silvestri… [Read the full story...]

15% of the mortgages Citigroup sold to government-owned Freddie Mac from the second half of 2009 and the first part of 2010 were riddled with flaws, according to an internal report obtained by Bloomberg. The error rate should be about 5%. The mistakes included missing insurance docs, missing appraisals and income miscalculations.

Other defects on these mortgages included… [Read the full story...]

Land values soared. States splurged on new programs. Then it all went bust, bringing down banks and state governments with them. This wasn’t America in 2011, it was America in 1841… [Read the full story...]