News Links: Corzine Rebuffed Internal Warnings on Risks at MF Global

MF Global Holdings Ltd.’s executive in charge of controlling risks raised serious concerns several times last year to directors at the securities firm about the growing bet on European bonds by his boss, Jon S. Corzine, people familiar with the matter said. The executive who challenged Mr. Corzine resigned in March.

Past and present MF Global (MFGLQ.PK) employees sued ex-CEO Jon Corzine and other executives over alleged misrepresentations they say destroyed the value of the company’s stock.

Occupy Wall Street may be turning people off with its tactics, but it’s got nothing on the banks: 75% of Americans agree that the power of corporations and banks should be reduced, according to a WSJ/NBC Poll released two weeks ago.

Forget politics. The 99%, the Occupy Wall Street movement, is not about politics. But politicians don’t get it yet. The Dems sure don’t. And while Bill O’Reilly says the movement is already dead, insider Frank Luntz thinks OWS is not only very alive, but getting dangerously bigger. In fact, he’s very "scared" for his clients.

U.K. retail sales fell the most in six months in November as the weaker economic outlook prompted Britons to curtail spending, according to the British Retail Consortium.

Retailers are generally optimistic about their holiday performance so far, although shaky economic conditions could change things quickly, the chief executive officer of American Express Co said on Tuesday.

Welfare Reform Minister David Freud said today he was looking at whether new claimants, who go on to take the money for long periods, should have to agree to a charge against their property, to be paid when the home is sold. "The current system of SMI payments does not encourage people to get on top of their own finances," Freud said in an e-mailed statement. "It is also not sustainable"

Standard & Poor’s said on Tuesday it is considering downgrading the European Financial Stability Facility, the euro zone’s bailout fund that is financed by member governments, after saying it could downgrade the majority of euro zone nations on Monday.

More than a third of U.S. shoppers are already done with most of their holiday shopping, a survey showed on Monday, signaling that retailers need to offer bigger incentives to win sales in the few weeks before Christmas.

Standard & Poor’s on Monday warned it may carry out an unprecedented mass downgrade of euro zone countries if EU leaders fail to reach an agreement on how to solve the region’s debt crisis in a summit later this week.

A threat by Standard & Poors to slash credit ratings across the euro zone has sounded a clarion call, which could help Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel force through a change to the European Union treaty at a summit this week.

A court error on Friday offered a brief glimpse at information that Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics have tried to shield from the public during their high-stakes patent litigation.

Following reports that the company as a whole had been acquired, Gowalla today announced that its founders and several team members have joined Facebook and will move to its Palo Alto headquarters.