The SEC has announced that J.P. Morgan Securities will pay $153 million to settle charges that the bank sold $1.1 billion in mortgage-backed securities that were designed to fail. That's about what the bank makes every three days.

Life is different near the center of the tech bubble. Facebook employees, due to earn staggering fortunes, are nevertheless sad. They'll have to wait six months for the money, you see.

It's probably wildly overvalued, so don't buy the stock. But if you're a happy Pandora customer, you can cheer the news that the magical online radio service's IPO went well today. Three billion dollars well.

Someone is aggressively hyping Facebook to the financial community. Investors are being told the social network's value will double in 12 months — and quadruple over 18 months — to $100 billion. It sounds like someone has shares to unload.

At least some players in the world of High Finance are starting to ease up about the consequences of the United States defaulting on its debt. Until recently, the consensus had been that any default caused by Congress' failure to raise the debt ceiling would risk a calamitous panic, so the hike shouldn't be open to the politics of brinksmanship. But now that analysts listening into Washington are expecting a ceiling hike to coincide with long-term debt reduction measures, then, well, maybe a brief "technical default" of a "few days" would be worth it if Congress needs that time to strike a deal. Sounds easy! Let's do it. But maybe not? Because this all rests on a pretty thin reading of our irreparably broken political system.

Perhaps you think of yourself as a "rational investor," and you're not normally "the type" to make major investment decisions based on the shrill urgings of a pop culture internet blog. Until now. Sell your gold! It's not too late!

Pandora just took a $30 million loan ahead of its IPO. That's on top of $86 million it took in venture capital and accrued unpaid dividends. Luckily for Pandora's users, the indispensable internet radio service can't be killed, debts notwithstanding.

Elizabeth Warren, the consumer advocate and Harvard professor who's heading up the brand-new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in its infancy, stopped by the House of Representatives today for a hearing called — seriously — "Who's Watching the Watchmen?" It got kind of intense!

Now here's something you couldn't have imagined: Members of Congress tend to outperform the stock market with their personal investments! And you all thought they were so stupid.

Facebook will be worth $100 billion by the time it goes public, sources told the Wall Street Journal, after earning more than $2 billion this year before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Who knew Americans' personal information was so valuable?

The Facebook investment bubble is apparently too inflated for some investors. Owners of close to $1 billion in Facebook stock are slashing their asking price as they push toward the exits, sources tell Reuters.

How do we know Silicon Valley is inflating an unsustainable tech investment bubble? Because Hollywood dope Ashton Kutcher and his technologically enhanced mate Demi Moore have somehow become mascots for tech investment. Sell, by God. Sell!

Wall Street analysts hoped Larry Page would lay out his vision for Google on his first earnings call as CEO. Instead Page spoke briefly, took no questions and left. Now it's downgrade time.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, the princess of Wall Street, is venting again about the ignorant public and regulators whose "misconceptions" are blocking them from seeing the glory and perfection that comes with a fully unregulated financial services sector.

Warren Buffett is one of the world's richest men, and incontrovertibly the world's folksiest mega-billionaire. He's also old. Shares in his company, Berkshire Hathaway, cost more than $120K apiece. So the question of who succeeds Buffett is, you know, big.

The New York Times interviewed a "noticeably" thinner Bernie Madoff in prison and, wouldn't you know it, he said that "unidentified banks and hedge funds were somehow 'complicit' in his elaborate fraud," and also this:

Heartbreaking news from America's schools: children are approaching their teachers to ask what they should do now that their parents are unemployed. How embarrassing. Parents, don't let your kids blow up your spot. Talk to them about their newfound poorness.

A former Swiss banker provided the names of more than 2,000 prominent tax cheats to Wikileaks, which has promised to quickly release details of the evasion — unlike governments and the media, which apparently buried the scandal.

On today's Oprah Winfrey Show, she and financial powerhouse Suze Orman performed a financial—and psychological—intervention on "Octomom" Nadya Suleman. The best part of the show, however, involved awkward lesbian jokes related to Suleman's addiction to approval from women.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly reviewing whether a private Facebook investment vehicle runs afoul of financial disclosure laws. Which, given that the vehicle was designed by the infamous economic pillagers at Goldman Sachs, borders on a self-answering question.