The Week Ahead: Euro Finance Ministers to Meet; Fed to Publish Meeting Minutes

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Major Expansion Ahead at The Washington Post

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British Open Economic Debate Ahead of 2015 Election

The chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, on Monday promised more austerity and further welfare cuts while warning that the task of repairing government finances was “not even half-done.”

That vow followed a call on Sunday by Ed Miliband, the Labour leader and head of the opposition, for better protection for low-wage workers.

Only a year ago, Britain faced the risk of a return to recession, and Mr. Osborne’s austerity program was getting much of the blame. But Britain is now expected to be one of the fastest growing advanced economies in 2014, and that turnaround has left political parties scrambling for advantage at the start of the new year.

While the economic uptick is good news for the Conservative government, led by Prime Minister David Cameron, Mr. Osborne warned against a “dangerous new complacency,” arguing that, if given the chance, the opposition Labour Party would squander the gains made rather than consolidate them.

Despite its claims that austerity has laid the foundation for recovery, the government was put on the defensive late last year when the Labour Party campaigned over the cost-of-living squeeze felt by many voters whose pay increases have lagged behind big jumps in energy and other bills.

Mr. Miliband, writing in the Independent newspaper on Sunday, called for tougher action against unscrupulous firms that he said exploit cheap labor.

Calling for stiffer fines for companies that breach minimum wage laws and a ban on recruitment agencies hiring only foreign workers, Mr. Miliband also sought to defuse the debate over immigration and worries that workers from Eastern Europe were undercutting pay levels.

“Unless we act to change our economy, low-skill immigration risks making the problems of the cost of living crisis worse for those at the sharp end,” Mr. Miliband wrote. “It isn’t prejudiced to believe that.”

Mr. Osborne, speaking on Monday at a factory in Birmingham, sought to put the focus firmly back on deficit reduction, asserting that his economic program “is working,” but that an additional £25 billion in spending cuts will be needed after the next elections, due in May 2015, including £12 billion from the welfare budget.

The speech effectively challenged Mr. Osborne’s opponents to say whether they would match his target and, if so, how they would achieve it — if not through restricting welfare payments.

Mr. Osborne highlighted some potential welfare savings including cuts to housing benefits for people younger than 25, and the new restrictions on subsidized housing for those over certain salary thresholds.

Yet, on Sunday Mr. Cameron made clear that significant increases in the state pension will continue, insulating many older people from the squeeze on public spending. Political parties are wary of upsetting retired people because they tend to vote more than other age groups.

Labour countered Monday that it would focus more on growth as a way to reduce the scale of cuts. “We will get the deficit down in a fair way,” Labour’s finance spokesman, Ed Balls, said in a statement. “We know that the way to mitigate the scale of the cuts needed is to earn and grow our way to higher living standards for all.”

Meanwhile, Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, the junior party in the coalition government, distanced himself from Mr. Osborne’s comments on welfare. The Conservatives are making a “monumental mistake” in a remorseless search for cuts and in focusing the burden of consolidation on the working poor, Mr. Clegg, who is deputy prime minister, said at a news conference on Monday in London.

Although Britain’s next general election is more than a year away, elections for the European Parliament in May this year will provide an earlier test of the parties’ relative popularity with the British public.

As the general election approaches, and with opinion polls pointing to an inconclusive outcome, Mr. Clegg’s party is trying to distinguish its image from that of the Conservatives.

Looking Ahead: Economic Reports for the Week of Sept. 2

ECONOMIC REPORTS Information to be released this week includes construction spending for July and the Institute for Supply Management index of manufacturing activity in August (Tuesday); the United States trade deficit for July, the Federal Reserve’s beige book regional economic report, and the Challenger, Gray & Christmas report on job cuts in August (Wednesday); weekly jobless claims, ADP employment for August, and factory orders for July (Thursday); and the United States unemployment report for August (Friday).

CORPORATE EARNINGS Companies scheduled to report results include H&R Block (Tuesday); Dollar General (Wednesday); Smith & Wesson (Thursday); and Smithfield Foods (Friday).

IN THE UNITED STATES On Monday, banks, financial markets, government offices and many businesses will be closed in observance of the Labor Day holiday.

On Wednesday, automakers are scheduled to report on North American vehicle sales in August.

OVERSEAS On Monday, the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, will brief a government budget committee on Greece’s third financial assistance package, and the governor of the Bank of England, Mark J. Carney, will hold a news conference before the meeting of the Group of 20 nations.

On Tuesday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development will issue its assessment of the economies of the Group of 7 industrialized nations and China.

On Thursday, the Group of 20 nations will begin its annual two-day conference in St. Petersburg, Russia; and the Bank of England and the European Central Bank will issue decisions on interest rates and monetary policy.

Looking Ahead: Economic Reports for the Week of Aug. 5

ECONOMIC REPORTS The market will be closely watching remarks by Federal Reserve policy makers this week for more clues on when the central bank might begin to reduce its bond-buying stimulus policy, despite mixed signals from the job market. The latest job report on Friday showed nonfarm payrolls rose by 162,000 in July, below expectations, but the unemployment rate fell to 7.4 percent, its lowest since December 2008. On Monday, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Richard W. Fisher, is to deliver a speech on the economy. On Tuesday, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Charles L. Evans, is scheduled to speak.

The Institute of Supply Management releases its nonmanufacturing index (Monday); the Census Bureau releases its report on the balance of trade in June (Tuesday); the Federal Reserve releases its report on consumer credit in June (Wednesday); the Labor Department releases its report on initial claims for unemployment benefits (Thursday); the Census Bureau releases its report on wholesale inventories (Friday).

CORPORATE EARNINGS Companies scheduled to report results include HSBC (Monday); Archer Daniels Midland, CVS Caremark, Tenet Healthcare, Molson Coors, Walt Disney, Crédit Agricole, Porsche and Standard Chartered (Tuesday); Carlyle Group, Time Warner, AOL, Tesla Motors and Groupon (Wednesday); Dean Foods, T-Mobile, Apollo Global, Commerzbank, Deutsche Telekom, Nestlé and Rio Tinto (Thursday); and J.C. Penney (Friday).

Looking Ahead: Economic Reports for the Week of July 29

ECONOMIC REPORTS Data to be released will include pending home sales for June (Monday); the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller home price index for May and the consumer confidence index for July (Tuesday); the first estimate of second-quarter gross domestic product, ADP employment for July, and the Chicago Purchasing Manager Index report for July (Wednesday); weekly jobless claims, Institute for Supply Management data for July and auto sales for July (Thursday); and the United States unemployment report for July, factory orders for June and consumer spending for June (Friday).

CORPORATE EARNINGS Companies scheduled to report results include Express Scripts (Monday); Aflac, Banco Santander, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Fiat, Merck, Pfizer, and UBS (Tuesday); Allstate, Anheuser-Busch, BNP Paribas, CBS, Comcast, EADS, MasterCard, MetLife, Volkswagen and Whole Foods Market (Wednesday); American International Group, BMW, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, Kellogg, Lloyds Banking Group, The New York Times Company, Procter & Gamble and Société Générale (Thursday); and Allianz, Axa, Chevron, Royal Bank of Scotland, Toyota Motor and Viacom (Friday).

IN THE UNITED STATES On Monday, the civil fraud trial of Fabrice P. Tourre, a former trader at Goldman Sachs, continues.

On Tuesday, the Federal Open Market Committee, headed by Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, begins a two-day meeting, with a statement on monetary policy to be released on Wednesday; the chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Jo White, and the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Gary Gensler, are scheduled to testify before the Senate Banking Committee about how the Dodd-Frank Act is being carried out; and President Obama is scheduled to speak on the economy in Chattanooga, Tenn.

On Wednesday, the Treasury will announce its quarterly refunding plans.

On Thursday, the International Trade commission is expected to release a final decision on Apple’s patent-infringement case against Samsung Electronics.

On Friday, Dell is scheduled to hold its twice-adjourned shareholder meeting on a proposed buyout of the computer company by its founder, Michael S. Dell, and the private equity firm Silver Lake.

OVERSEAS On Monday, BMW will show off a production version of its i3 electric car in Beijing, London and New York.

On Thursday, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England will release statements on monetary policy.

Corner Office: Getting Ahead by Having Answers Instead of Questions

Q. What were some of your first moves when you joined Bausch & Lomb a few years ago?

A. I was hired by our board of directors to turn the company around. It had been a market leader in eye health for many of its 159 years, but the last 30 years were not the company’s best 30 years. The first thing I needed to do was understand what made the company tick. I flew to Rochester, and did a town-hall meeting that was webcast globally, but I never went to my office.

I then went on a global tour. For about three weeks, I met with hundreds and hundreds of front-line managers and colleagues and customers before I actually spent the first day in my office. I learned what was wrong, and I felt pretty confident that I could create my turnaround plan from that.

Q. What steps did you take from there?

A. I think changing a culture requires multiple actions, and actions speak louder than words. You can talk about culture all you want, but it takes a while to seep in because it’s really about what you do. We owned a skyscraper in Rochester, but a few miles away we had a manufacturing plant, R.& D., customer service, sales and marketing, all under one roof. Yet all the executives were sitting in this fancy tower and everybody who really did the work was sitting in this other facility.

So I walked in after four weeks on the road and saw my huge office with this skyline view, and I said, “This isn’t going to work. If we’re really going to create one company, one culture, one team mentality, then we should all sit together.” And so we moved all the executives out of there to the building with everybody else. It was a great symbol that we’re all in this together, so let’s all sit together.

Q. What else?

A. I learned early on that we hadn’t brought a lot of meaningful innovation to market in four decades. I looked at our R.& D. organization and I saw that the talent level in that group was really high. It dawned on me that they were really focused on getting patents and publishing papers and creating process, but not really getting product out the door. When I talked to them, I learned that they really wanted to create something in their labs that helps people and the company.

Q. Why wasn’t that happening?

A. I think the disconnect was from a lack of focus on what success was. Success wasn’t around the number of patents you had or how many papers you published. Success needed to be defined as creating products that mattered. One of the ways we did it was by a semantics shift from “R.& D.” to “D.& R.” to show people that while we invest in research, let’s prioritize the development side.

Q. What other changes did you make?

A. We also made sure we were not spending our money wastefully. R.& D. sometimes can be the black hole of spending in health care companies, and so we wanted to also create incentives for scientists not to chase dreams that had low probability of success. So we made sure we celebrated and rewarded scientists for killing things early, too. Because a lot of times, these projects become like a child to the scientist. It’s what they work on. They fear that if they get rid of it, there won’t be a need for them in the organization and so they continue to spend and figure out ways to keep their project alive against very low odds.

The way you crack that is by saying that you should celebrate your successes and that you should equally celebrate your fast kills. We all fail at things. It’s about failing intelligently and failing fast so that you don’t waste money chasing something that’s never going to make it out the door and into customers’ hands.

Q. What are some leadership lessons you’ve learned over the course of your life?

A. The best advice I ever got was from Fred Hassan, who’s one of my mentors: “Never chase the next job.” Just do the job that you’re doing today the best you can, and be selfless and do the right thing for the people you’re managing and leading and let them take the credit. Let them shine and you’ll be successful.

I’ve never asked for a promotion or a raise in my career. That’s another piece of advice I give to students: “Let your work stand on its own. If you’re in there fighting for a raise and a promotion, it means that your work’s not doing it on its own. There’s some disconnect. Go back and reflect on why.”

Q. Other lessons?

A. You should always try to make the people around you as good and strong and talented as you can, because they make you shine. I think that’s probably the biggest key to success, and it probably comes from my days as a consultant. The most successful partners all had something in common — they had developed a lot of people to become partners, and so that’s what I started to emulate when I was there.

Q. A lot of managers are uncomfortable giving candid feedback. Your thoughts on that?

A. When I first started managing people, you wanted to always just pat them on the back and say, “Great job,” and when they did something wrong, you wanted to pretend it never happened. But I learned that if you didn’t deal with those things right away, they could turn into a bigger problem. So I figured out very quickly that you had to deal with those things right up front.

Q. Other career advice?

A. I think most people don’t realize that everybody comes to the C.E.O. with problems. Most people don’t come to tell me good news. The people I rely on or view as high-potential folks are people who come with a problem but also bring ideas for the solution. It may not be the right solution. We may do something entirely different, but they’ve been thoughtful about it.

Earlier in my career, when I went to my C.E.O.’s, I walked in and said, “Here’s the problem and I have two ideas for what we can do.” I never walked in without trying to be thoughtful, and at least two steps ahead. If people are looking to advance their career, they may want to be more thoughtful about bringing some ideas for solving a problem, and not just presenting a problem.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Economix Blog: Bernanke Says Better Days Lie Ahead

Ben S. Bernanke is, of course, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, but he always seems most comfortable as an educator, a role he slips into for a commencement address on Saturday at Bard College at Simon’s Rock.

If you’re looking for news about monetary policy, read no further. Mr. Bernanke’s speech mentions not a word about his day job. (In 2009, he opened a commencement address by saying, “The business reporters should go get coffee or something, because I am not going to say anything about the markets or monetary policy.” This time, we had to read the whole thing to make sure that no hint of news was buried inside.)

No doubt the graduating class will be much relieved to have avoided a modern version of Paul Volcker’s commencement address at American University in 1984, dug up by Catherine Hollander of National Journal. One can only imagine the faces in that audience as Mr. Volcker announced, “I’d like to take advantage of your captive presence today, before you scatter into the real world, to reflect a bit on that uniqueness, on the justification for our special role and degree of independence within the government, and on the special responsibilities that independence implies.”

What Mr. Bernanke’s speech delivers, instead, is a brief and engaging sketch of the debate about the state of innovation.

Economic growth depends on innovation, and some see evidence we’re having less of it — or at least that the areas of ongoing innovation, like information technology, are making less difference in our lives. The economist Robert Gordon wrote last year that we’re no longer inventing anything as useful as indoor flushable toilets. The economist Tyler Cowen offered a fluid account of the same basic argument in a brief, important book with a long title: “The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick and Will (Eventually) Feel Better.”

Mr. Bernanke, describing this argument, compares the present moment with life in 1963, when he was 9 years old. “Though my memory may be selective, it doesn’t seem to me that the differences in daily life between then and now are all that large,” he says in the prepared text of the speech. “Heating, air conditioning, cooking, and sanitation in my childhood were not all that different from today. We had a dishwasher, a washing machine and a dryer. My family owned a comfortable car with air-conditioning and a radio, and the experience of commercial flight was much like today but without the long security lines. For entertainment, we did not have the Internet or video games, as I mentioned, but we had plenty of books, radio, musical recordings, and a color TV (although, I must acknowledge, the colors were garish and there were many fewer channels to choose from).”

But the real concern is about the future: What if life continues to resemble 1963? What if the Internet doesn’t change the world?

And on this count, Mr. Bernanke breaks with the bleak traditions of his dismal profession to declare himself a fundamental optimist.

He notes that pessimism also ran rampant in the 1930s; it is human nature to assume (and to predict) that current trends will persist. “It is common to hear people say that the epoch of enormous economic progress which characterized the 19th century is over; that the rapid improvement in the standard of life is now going to slow down,” John Maynard Keynes wrote at the time. Mr. Bernanke adds, “Sound familiar?”

Moreover, he says it is probably too soon to judge the impact of recent innovations.

And he sketches a world in which more people in more countries are pursuing innovations in competition for ever-greater rewards: “In short, both humanity’s capacity to innovate and the incentives to innovate are greater today than at any other time in history.”

So cheer up, graduates! It’s a difficult time to be young but, as this blog notes frequently, you’ve just taken the single most important step to improve your own prospects: You earned a college degree. Now do the rest of us a favor and innovate.

Looking Ahead: Economic Reports for the Week of May 6

ECONOMIC REPORTS Information to be released includes the euro area purchasing managers’ index for April (Monday); United States consumer credit for March and China trade data for April (Tuesday); China inflation for April (Wednesday); and weekly initial jobless claims and United States wholesale inventories for March (Thursday).

CORPORATE EARNINGS Companies scheduled to release quarterly results include Apollo Global and Target (Monday); HSBC, Société Générale, Walt Disney, Electronic Arts and Whole Foods (Tuesday); Toyota, Deutsche Telekom, Standard Chartered, AOL, Tesla, Groupon, Green Mountain and News Corporation (Wednesday); and Sony and Carlyle (Thursday).

IN THE UNITED STATES On Monday, the Senate votes on the Internet retail tax bill.

On Tuesday, the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on credit reports; the House Energy Committee will hold a hearing on the global energy landscape; and the House Science Committee will hold a hearing on the Keystone XL pipeline.

On Thursday, Daniel Loeb and Sam Zell will address the SALT conference in Las Vegas.

On Friday, Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, will address the annual conference of the Chicago Federal Reserve.

OVERSEAS On Wednesday, the European Parliament will meet with the so-called troika on the Cyprus bailout.

On Friday, finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 7 nations will begin a two-day meeting in Britain.

Boeing Is Moving Ahead With Updated 777

The company plans to add lightweight carbon-composite wings and new engines to the popular model to take advantage of technologies that it developed for its 787 Dreamliner and to cut fuel usage by perhaps 20 percent.

Boeing’s board approved the move to offer customers details about the capabilities and pricing of the plane. The decision suggests that the long-awaited redesign is close to becoming a reality.

Once several customers sign up, Boeing officials will go back to the board later this year for formal approval and money to start the project, known as the 777X.

Karen R. Crabtree, a Boeing spokeswoman, said any deals made now would be contingent on the board’s authorization of the plane.

“We have made great progress in our development work and have begun to discuss additional technical, pricing and schedule details with customers regarding the 777X, continuing to target entry into service near the end of the decade,” she said in statement. She added, “The timing of a decision to launch the program will depend on market response during this next phase of our discussions about the airplane.”

The 777, first flown in commercial service in 1995, holds a sweet spot in the growing commercial plane market. With only two engines, the various versions of the jet can carry more than 300 passengers over long distances, making it an economical workhorse for many airlines.

The move to upgrade the planes is an important moment for Boeing as it tries to retain its recent dominance in sales of twin-engine planes, which represent the vast middle of the size range for commercial jetliners.

Airlines are returning Boeing’s innovative 787 jets, which rely extensively on composite parts, to service after hazards with the lithium-ion batteries led to a three-month grounding. The 787s carry up to 250 people.

Airbus, Boeing’s main rival, is building the A350-XWB, its first jet making substantial use of composite parts, to compete with the 787 and the larger 777. Boeing also plans to build two larger versions of the 787.

Boeing would like to deliver the first of two new models of the 777 to customers by 2019.

The first model would probably seat about 400 people, while the second would hold about 350 passengers and might be ready in 2021.

Boeing has already said that General Electric will be the sole supplier of new, more fuel-efficient engines for the plane.

The airline Emirates, in particular, has pushed Boeing to move ahead with the 777, and hinted in early March that a decision was near.

DealBook: Looking Ahead to Civil and Criminal Cases to Come

Carl Court/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesInvestigators are said to be looking into the actions of four people who previously worked for JPMorgan Chase in London.

It is not really of question of whether there will be a major white-collar crime that captures the public’s attention in 2013; it’s a question of when and how costly it will be.

If the cases of 2012 can serve as a guide, too many loopholes in the system allow fraud to go undetected.

Take for instance the onetime futures trading firm PFGBest, whose founder confessed to having committed fraud for years at the company, which has about $200 million missing from its accounts. Though futures regulators have spent months wringing their hands on how such a fraud could have gone on for so long, the fact remains that some financiers may keep one step ahead of law enforcement when it comes to white-collar crimes.

Federal prosecutors, however, are likely to remain strongly focused on the insider trading cases. The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan has already racked up an impressive record of winning convictions in every insider trading case that went to trial. They are even winning cases the old-fashioned way by relying primarily on the testimony of cooperating witnesses.

The one black eye that remains for the government is the lack of signature prosecutions emerging from the near collapse of the financial system in 2008. Although the Justice Department and the New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, have filed civil cases seeking billions in recovery for the sale of questionable securities tied to toxic subprime mortgages, the cases are likely to take years to play out.

Looking ahead to 2013, several major investigations remain open and are likely to bring significant criminal or civil penalties:

Still More to Come on Libor

The investigation of manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, had been moving quietly along until the British bank Barclays announced a $450 million settlement in June 2012. The subsequent firestorm in Parliament over the bank’s conduct led to the resignation of its chief executive, Robert E. Diamond Jr., and a push to shift control of the interest rate mechanism into more trustworthy hands.

In hindsight, Barclays got off easily as the first bank to reach a settlement, although it probably did not feel like it in the days after the announcement. UBS has become the new focus of attention for Libor manipulation; it recently paid a $1.5 billion settlement, and its Japanese subsidiary pleaded guilty to fraud.
Other banks caught up in the investigation have to be dreading whether the UBS settlement is the new benchmark. If so, then a billion dollars may be the starting point for any negotiations with the Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which have been leading the investigation in this country. Add to that any penalties assessed by foreign regulators, and the cost of resolving the investigation will be a significant hit to the bottom line of some global banks.

More ominous is the possibility that the Justice Department will demand guilty pleas from banks. That requires an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, which could prove to be useful in the numerous civil lawsuits that have been filed against the banks, meaning more money could be paid out to resolve those cases.

Tackling Bribery and Corruption

As The New York Times has detailed, Wal-Mart is dealing with significant corruption issues in its Mexican subsidiary. The company also acknowledged that it was reviewing its global operations, and had already spent nearly $100 million on its internal investigation.

Though the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was enacted in 1977, only in the past few years have the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission started to extract significant penalties, often in sectors that had not previously been involved in overseas bribery cases.

For example, among the settlements in 2012 included four companies in the medical field, which all paid significant penalties: Smith & Nephew, $22 million; Biomet, $22.8 million; Pfizer, $60 million; and Eli Lilly, $29 million.

As more companies get caught up in these investigations, it will be interesting to see whether the courts punish repeat offenders more harshly. For instance, I.B.M. reached settlements with the S.E.C. in 2000 and again in 2011 over violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. A federal district judge in Washington is demanding greater accountability from the company before he will approve the proposed resolution of the case.

Insider Trading in the Cross Hairs

Although insider trading cases have become a staple of federal action in the last three years, the new attention has been on Steven A. Cohen and his hedge fund firm, SAC Capital.

Louis Lanzano/Associated PressThe government has indicted the portfolio manager Mathew Martoma, who worked at SAC Capital.

Prosecutors have charged a number of defendants with ties to SAC, and came close to Mr. Cohen in the insider trading indictment of the portfolio manager Mathew Martoma, Although Mr. Cohen is not named in the charges, prosecutors went out of their way to describe the “Hedge Fund Owner” as someone involved in the trading at issue, a sure sign the government is focusing on him.

Mr. Martoma’s lawyer said his client was innocent, which probably means that he will not cooperate with the government if it pursues a case against Mr. Cohen. Without that path to build a case, an interesting question is whether the S.E.C. will use its authority to hold SAC responsible as a “controlling person” for insider trading by its employees, which could result in a triple penalty being imposed. The firm received a so-called Wells notice stating that the agency is considering civil charges.

If the S.E.C. files such a case, this would be a new front in the fight over insider trading that shifts attention to the hedge funds and investment firms that employ the people who capitalized on confidential information. That could potentially expose firms to enormous liability even if their managers were not specifically aware of any legal violations.

Rogue Traders

Every year seems to bring news of a major trading loss as a result of a breakdown in the internal controls at a major financial institution. In 2011, UBS revealed that actions by Kweku Adoboli, a trader in London, cost the bank about $2.3 billion. In 2012, JPMorgan Chase said that a hedging strategy by traders in London had cost the bank at least $6 billion in losses.

On a smaller scale, the boutique brokerage firm Rochdale Securities suffered a $5 million loss when a trader bought about $1 billion in Apple shares, far beyond what he was permitted to do.

Although many of the outsize losses hurt banks’ shareholders rather than the general public, such actions have drawn public calls for accountability.

Prosecutors in London successfully obtained a conviction against Mr. Adoboli this year, and UBS was fined $47.5 million over failing to prevent the actions.

Olivia Harris/ReutersProsecutors in London successfully obtained a conviction against Kweku Adoboli, a former UBS trader in London.

More cases like these are likely to play out. As DealBook reported in October, investigators are looking into the actions of four people who previously worked for JPMorgan in London.

The nature of the markets may allow for more such blowups. Lightning-fast electronic trading allows huge positions to be built up in minutes, heightening the risk of sizable losses if anything goes awry.

And even when there is no sign of intentional wrongdoing, a small error can easily affect global markets. A software glitch at Knight Capital ended up costing the firm about $460 million, while memories of the 2010 “flash crash” are still fresh.

As the new year comes, white-collar cases will continue to serve up new object lessons of the perils and the pitfalls of the financial system. Some will come as a result of creative maneuverings by financiers, and some may call into question whether regulators are effectively overseeing the markets.

Looking Ahead: Economic Reports for the Week of Oct. 22

ECONOMIC REPORTS Data to be released will include new home sales for September (Wednesday); weekly jobless claims, durable goods for September and pending home sales for September (Thursday); and third-quarter gross domestic product and the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index for October (Friday).

CORPORATE EARNINGS Caterpillar, Hasbro, Texas Instruments and Yahoo (Monday); 3M, AK Steel, CIT, DuPont, Harley-Davidson, Lexmark, RadioShack, United Parcel Service, United Technologies, Whirlpool, Xerox, Amgen, Facebook and Netflix (Tuesday); AT&T, Boeing, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Delta Air Lines, Eli Lilly, General Dynamics, IAC/InterActive, Kimberly-Clark, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, US Airways, Volkswagen and Zynga (Wednesday); Aetna, Altria, Biogen Idec, Colgate-Palmolive, ConocoPhillips, Credit Suisse, Daimler, Dow Chemical, Eastman Chemical, International Paper, JetBlue Airways, New York Times, Procter & Gamble, Raytheon, Sprint Nextel, Apple and Amazon.com (Thursday); and Comcast, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Interpublic Group, K.K.R., Merck, Moody’s and Weyerhaeuser (Friday).

IN THE UNITED STATES On Tuesday, Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Mary L. Schapiro, chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, will provide updates on their agencies’ priorities at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s annual meeting; and Apple is expected to introduce a smaller iPad.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve will issue a statement at the conclusion of a two-day policy-making meeting Rajat K. Gupta, a former Goldman Sachs director, is scheduled to be sentenced for leaking inside information to Raj Rajaratnam, co-founder of the Galleon Group.

On Thursday, Microsoft will introduce Windows 8, the latest version of its operating system.

OVERSEAS On Wednesday, Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, will brief German lawmakers on the debt crisis.

On Thursday, an International Trade Commission judge will release his findings in a patent infringement case between Apple and Samsung concerning the design of the iPhone, its user interface and headset plugs.

Wall Street Forges Ahead

Our myths about gun violence hinder our attempts to solve the epidemic.

In the poorest places, the lack of proper clothing costs lives. Now a simple program in India is attacking the problem with urgency.

Readers debate the value and methodology of U.S. News & World Report’s annual list.