Finance

SUBJECT OF

FACTS (32)
EVENTS (12)

Oct 2003	Years before Enron declared bankruptcy in 2001 that the IRS asked the SEC to investigate the firm : 2.5	Harper's Index Source: U.S. Senate Committee on Finance
Oct 2003	Amount in "disgorgement" that the SEC has ordered a former Xerox CEO to pay in connection with alleged fraud : $7,600,000	Harper's Index Source: Securities and Exchange Commission
May 2003	Last period in which the Dow declined for four consecutive years: 1929-1932	Harper's Index Source: Dow Jones (N.Y.C.)
Apr 2003	Last calendar year in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained in value: 1999	Harper's Index Source: Dow Jones (N.Y.C.)
Oct 2002	Value of the Dow Jones industrial average in 1996 when Alan Greenspan warned of investors' "irrational exuberance": 6,437	Harper's Index Source: Harper's research
Apr 2002	Number of times between 1998 and 2000 that errors or irregularities forced publicly traded firms to restate earnings: 463	Harper's Index Source: Financial Executives International (Morristown, N.J.)
Apr 2002	Number of people charged between 1988 and 1992 in connection with the U.S. savings and loan collapse: 1,098	Harper's Index Source: Robert Tillman, St. John's University (Queens, N.Y.)
Apr 2002	Minimum number of violations for which the Securities and Exchange Commission cited George W. Bush in the 1991 : 4	Harper's Index Source: Center for Public Integrity (Washington)
Nov 2001	Total cumulative profit earned by the Nasdaq's 4,200 companies since September 1995: 0	Harper's Index Source: Multex.com (N.Y.C.)
Jul 2001	Days after Dow Jones laid off 202 workers that its CEO published a scathing review of his Caribbean vacation: 1	Harper's Index Source: Dow Jones & Company (N.Y.C.)/ Harper's research
Jul 2001	Percentage change, since January, in the stock price of 99¢ Only Stores: +65	Harper's Index Source: Harper's research
May 2001	Average percentage by which a Wall Street analyst's high-tech-earnings forecast in early 1999 was incorrect: 44	Harper's Index Source: Bloomberg News (N.Y.C.)
May 2001	Average percentage by which an amateur stock website's forecast was incorrect: 21	Harper's Index Source: Bloomberg News (N.Y.C.)
Mar 2001	Annual number of U.S. elementary school students who play The Stock Market Game, a 10-week trading simulation: 200,000	Harper's Index Source: Securities Industry Foundation for Economic Education (N.Y.C.)
Dec 2000	Days after his appointment last July that Japan's top finance regulator resigned over “suspicious” payments he'd received: 26	Harper's Index Source: Japan Information and Culture Center (Washington)
Nov 2000	Factor by which the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased between 1992 and 1998: 2.9	Harper's Index Source: Wall Street JournalMarket Data Group (South Brunswick, N.J.)
Jul 2000	Percentage change since last August in the price of a seat on the New York Stock Exchange: -36	Harper's Index Source: New York Stock Exchange (N.Y.C.)
Apr 2000	Percentage change in foreign direct investment in Vietnam between 1991 and 1996: +1,142	Harper's Index Source: Embassy of Vietnam (Washington)
Apr 2000	Percentage change in foreign direct investment in Vietnam since 1996: -43	Harper's Index Source: Embassy of Vietnam (Washington)
Apr 2000	Total return on a dollar invested in the “socially responsible” Domini 400 Social Index in 1990: $5.75	Harper's Index Source: Hal Brill, Jack A. Brill, and Cliff Feigenbaum, Investing With Your Values, Bloomberg Press (Princeton, N.J.)
Feb 2000	Percentage change in the stock price of Microsoft rival Red Hat in the five weeks after the antitrust ruling: +218	Harper's Index Source: Lippert/Heilshorn &Associates, Inc. (N.Y.C.)
Jan 2000	Estimated amount lost by Isaac Newton in South Sea stock speculation in the 1720s: $2,000,000	Harper's Index Source: Edward Chancellor, Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (N.Y.C.)
Apr 1999	Factor by which U.S. stock market growth must exceed GDP growth for Social Security stock investment to work: 5	Harper's Index Source: Left Business Observer (N.Y.C.)
Mar 1999	Percentage change since 1996 in the value of initial public offerings of stock in Silicon Valley companies: -45	Harper's Index Source: Securities Data Corporation (Newark, N.J.)
Mar 1999	Keys required, along with the alt key, to type the euro symbol on new Windows-compatible keyboards sold in the U.S.: 0,1,2,8	Harper's Index Source: Microsoft Corp. (Redmond, Wash.)
Feb 1999	Estimated chances that a U.S. corporate merger will result in short- and long-term shareholder losses: 2 in 3	Harper's Index Source: Professor Mark Sirower, The Wharton School (Philadelphia)
Feb 1999	Number of S&Ls or shareholder groups seeking damages from the government over its handling of the 1980s bailout: 120	Harper's Index Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Dec 1998	Number of countries whose “unsustainable” debt the World Bank identified as “in need” of relief in 1996: 40	Harper's Index Source: The World Bank (Washington)
Dec 1998	Number of countries whose “unsustainable” debt the World Bank identified as “in need” of relief that have received debt relief since then: 2	Harper's Index Source: The World Bank (Washington)
Dec 1998	Estimated average amount Americans lose to securities fraud, per hour: $1,000,000	Harper's Index Source: North American Securities Administrators Association, Inc. (Washington)
Nov 1998	Number of heart attacks on Wall Street the day the market dropped 513 points last August: 2	Harper's Index Source: Dr. Ira Schulman, NYU Downtown Hospital (N.Y.C.)
Oct 1998	Total bad debt held by American S&Ls in 1988, expressed as a percentage of U.S. GDP that year: 3.2	Harper's Index Source: Japan Economic Institute (Washington)

September 18, 2008	The presidential candidates scrambled to blame each other for the financial crisis and to clarify their positions on the proposed recovery plan; John McCain said that if he were president, he'd fire the chairman of the SEC, who is not technically under presidential jurisdiction.	Weekly Review By Sam Stark Source 1: The New York Times Source 2: The Washington Post Source 3: The Washington Post Source 4: CNN Source 5: Politico Source 6: The Wall Street Journal Source 7: ABC
January 25, 2008	Jerome Kerviel, a 31-year-old arbitrager for the French bank Societe Generale recalled by many of his acquaintances as a mediocrity, was arrested in Paris for allegedly losing $7 billion of his employer's capital in fraudulent stock bets. Experts linked the bank's unwinding of Kerviel's trades to last week's precipitous drop in world markets. “Wouldn't it be embarrassing,” asked Barry L. Ritholtz, chief of the investment firm FusionIQ, “if the Fed had to make one of the biggest emergency rate cuts ever because of some rogue trader?”	Weekly Review By Christian Lorentzen Source 1: New York Times Source 2: New York Times
May 20, 2007	China announced that it would invest $3 billion in the New York‒based private equity group Blackstone.	Weekly Review By Paul Ford Source: The New York Time
August 22, 2005	A California Army veteran and resident of the United States for 51 years was upset with J.P. Morgan Chase for repeatedly getting his name wrong in their credit-card database, misspelling "Sami Habbas" as "Palestinian Bomber."	Weekly Review By Paul Ford Source: ABC News
April 15, 2005	Prompted by the credit-card industry, which made $30 billion in profits last year, the House approved new legislation that will make it much harder for families to declare personal bankruptcy.	Weekly Review By Paul Ford Source 1: American Progress Action Source 2: New York Post
March 16, 2005	The Department of Homeland Security was preparing for: the detonation of a ten-kiloton nuclear device; a biological attack with aerosolized anthrax; an outbreak of pneumonic plague; a flu pandemic starting in south China; the spraying of a chemical blister agent over a football stadium; an attack on an oil refinery; the explosion of a tank of chlorine; a 7.2-magnitude earthquake; a major hurricane in a metropolitan area; three Cesium-137 dirty bombs going off in three different cities, each contaminating thirty-six city blocks; the detonation of improvised bombs in sports stadiums and emergency rooms; liquid anthrax in ground beef; a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak; and a cyber attack on the nation's financial infrastructure.	Weekly Review By Paul Ford Source: The New York Times
February 26, 2005	The financial records of 1.2 million federal employees were stolen from or lost by the Bank of America; Senator Pat Leahy's credit-card number was among the missing.	Weekly Review By Paul Ford Source: BBC News
February 3, 2005	A report showed that the former head of the New York Stock Exchange paid his personal assistant $240,000 a year.	Weekly Review By Theodore Ross Source: The Daily News
December 17, 2003	France and Germany agreed to cooperate on restructuring Iraq's debt.	Weekly Review By Roger D. Hodge Source: New York Times
December 17, 2003	Singapore quarantined 70 people who came in contact with the researcher on a recent visit, and stocks in Taiwan dropped 2 percent.	Weekly Review By Roger D. Hodge Source: CNN
December 10, 2003	U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz decreed that Canada, Germany, France, Russia, and other nations that opposed the conquest of Iraq will be ineligible for $18.6 billion in reconstruction contracts. The announcement was greeted with astonishment by the blacklisted countries; Russia said that it would now refuse to consider restructuring Iraq's $8 billion debt, and Canada said the decision would probably rule out further reconstruction aid.	Weekly Review By Roger D. Hodge Source: Boston Globe
September 25, 2001	The Dow Jones Industrial Average posted a 14.3 percent loss, its worst week since the Great Depression.	Weekly Review By Roger D. Hodge

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