Reports about positive gross domestic product readings and other relatively good readings of the economy condition are just disguising the true state of affairs which is Depression of the US economy, believes Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg said Tuesday. In his daily briefing to investors, Rosenberg said the Great Depression also had its high points, with a series of positive GDP reports and sharp stock market gains. But then as now, those signs of recovery were unsustainable and only provided a false sense of stability, said Rosenberg.

Charles Nenner, founder and president of Charles Nenner research, forecasts that the Dow Jones Industrial Average will lose about half of its value over the next couple of years as it follows a Nikkei-like pattern of several sharp rallies in an overall decline.

Marc Faber, the author of "The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report," told that with its continued printing of money the US Federal Reserve will create a “final crisis” that will annihilate the US economy once for all. And thus he urges the investors who keep to the same view to hold stocks instead of bonds in their portfolios. Meantime, analysts expect that the Fed will decide to re-start easing monetary policy, possibly by buying assets, as early as Aug. 10 when the next meeting over policy is scheduled.

Citi achieved the settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission under which Citigroup Inc will pay $75 million. The settlement comes after the SEC’s probe into the Citi’s failure to disclose subprime exposure to investors in 2007. Apart from this SEC also charged Citi executive and a former chief financial officer of misrepresenting the bank's exposure, although not with intentional misconduct.

According to the reports by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland said that the ban aims to put the conditions in place for the British government to start selling its 83 percent stake in the bank next year. While the sale "won't be conducted in one go," it still should be started, believes Chief Executive Stephen Hester. "But I would be disappointed if there would not be the first steps toward privatization next year," he added.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, who probes the financial crisis, subpoenaed Goldman Sachs Group over its failure to hand in the relevant documents to the panel. Instead of providing the necessary files and grant interviews in connection with the panel's probe Goldman flooded the panel with 2.5 billion pages of records. Responding to the panel’s request for the documents the company produced 5 terabytes of records, with each terabyte containing 500 million pages of digitized records, FCIC Chairman Phil Angelides told reporters on a conference call.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, that was created last year to examine the causes of the crisis in the nature of the 9/11 panel that examined intelligence failures preceding the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, starts its first hearings with current and former executives of Citigroup to be probed there.

On Sunday China’s Commerce Minister Chen Deming made a statement that the Celestial Empire will immediately respond if the United States declares the country a currency manipulator and imposes trade sanctions. Washington was accused of politicizing the issue ahead of an April 15 deadline for the U.S. Treasury to rule whether China is unfairly holding down its exchange rate to gain a competitive edge in global markets.

Senior U.S. Federal Reserve officials placed different emphasis on inflation risks on Thursday, with one warning failure to withdraw support policies soon enough could trigger inflation while another played down such risks. Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Hoenig said the Fed should act sooner rather than later to contain longer-term inflation pressures and avoid sowing the seeds of a future crisis.

According to experts the following year will be marked with heightened regulation and more aggressive prosecutions after this year of the Ponzi scheme revelations. John Coffee, a law professor at Columbia University, notes that in 2009 the Securities and Exchange Commission became much stricter and it will likely issue more criminal referrals next year. However he doesn’t expect much success for these prosecutions. He says that the cases will likely result in monetary penalties in 2010 but probably will involve "people lower in the food chain."

Warren Buffett, perhaps the world's most admired investor, said on Thursday the financial panic that gripped the globe last year is a thing of the past, even as the U.S. economy's struggles persist. "The financial panic is behind us," the world's second-richest person said at Columbia University's business school. "Our economy was sputtering, still is sputtering some."

 A quarterly survey by The Nielsen Company, conducted between September 28 and October 16 showed that global consumer confidence is bouncing back with the United States reporting a positive trend for the first time since 2007. Highest confidence levels were recorded in India, Indonesia and Norway with the weakest reported in Japan, Latvia, Portugal and South Korea. Yet in Korea the index has significantly improved.

Apple Inc. rose to a record in extended trading yesterday after fourth-quarter profit and revenue topped estimates, fueled by back-to-school orders for the iPhone, iPod and Macintosh computer. Apple climbed as much as $14.99, or 7.9 %, to $204.85 in late trading, exceeding the intraday record of $202.96 set in 2007. The shares, which have more than doubled this year, closed at $189.86 yesterday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. “I think Apple is the new Sony.

The big banks are showing they can still make money, even as Main Street struggles - though not from lending, refinancing homes or other bread-and-butter business.  Instead, they're doing what Wall Street does best - betting big on stocks, bonds, commodities and other assets.  Citigroup, the shakiest of the major banks during the financial crisis, reported Thursday it eked out a quarterly profit from trading, despite suffering more losses on consumer loans. Trading also drove big profits at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase.

 The number of high net-worth individuals in Asia Pacific slumped 14 percent in 2008 and they lost over a fifth of their wealth, leading to only cautious moves from cash back into stocks this year, Merrill Lynch and Capgemini said on Tuesday.