A former Goldman Sachs board member on Wednesday surrendered to federal authorities to face criminal charges stemming from a massive hedge fund insider trading case.

Rajat Gupta appeared in Manhattan federal court. The charges were not immediately disclosed.

Voters in Denver, Colo., will head to the polls next week to decide whether or not the city's employers should be required to give workers paid sick days. Among the first of its kind in the country, the contentious ballot initiative has attracted plenty of attention from restaurant owners outside of Colorado -- and plenty of money, too.

Bank of America CEO Bryan Moynihan says the public needs to start thinking before they criticize his company.

In the late ’50s and ’60s, during the peak of the civil rights movement, marches and meetings had a jazz soundtrack. Masterworks like Max Roach’s “Freedom Now Suite,” Charles Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus” and Sonny Rollins’ “Freedom Suite” were equal parts incendiary and innovative — brilliant music that reflected their times with precision and passion. As that era gave way to the heyday of Black Nationalism, political themes continued in the vibrant jazz of musicians like Archie Shepp, Sunny Murray and Julius Hemphill, among others.

We’re a little more than a month into Occupy Wall Street, and there are signs that public interest in the protest campaign is cresting.

“This is the most heavily documented protest in the history of the world by a long shot,” says Jesse LaGreca, 31, an underemployed restaurant manager who has been at Occupy Wall Street since the beginning. “And It really serves two purposes. One, you’re bearing witness – you’re creating an image that is not being broadcast elsewhere. And I think that really messes with the mainstream media because if we’ve got our livestream and 30-40,000 people are watching something happen in real time and then seven hours later you see the way the news portrays it, it just totally blows that myth apart.”

The National Lawyers Guild, which is representing some of the more than 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge in early October, says that some people in the group have decided to turn down a deal from the Manhattan District Attorney. The deal was offered to about half the arrestees, who were mostly charged with disorderly conduct. Instead of accepting the offer — in which Cyrus Vance's office would drop the charges against the protesters in six months if they don't get arrested again during that time period — they might want to take their chances at trial. "They’re more principled than a random 700 people that you would single out," explained lead attorney Martin Stolar, on why they're willing to risk the fifteen days of jail time or $500 fine. Or Martin just thinks he's got a good case and he's already laying the groundwork with reporters!

Who is in Zuccoti Park, and why? Here are excerpts from the second in our series of interviews with the protesters.
 

Stacey Hessler, 38, DeLand, Florida

When did you get here?

Kevin Zeese of October2011.Org gives an interview before leading a protest at the Newseum where Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue is appearing on ABC This Week.

Author and retired federal ALJ Lillian McEwen will reveal to the McClendon Group for the first time in public her reaction to current controversies regarding Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, with whom she had a five-year romantic relationship in the early 1980s. In her powerful 2011 memoir, DC Unmasked and Undressed, McEwen recounts growing up in an abusive home in DC and finding happiness -- including in the law and in a number of ways with her relationship with Thomas. By the time she ended the relationship with him, she had introduced him to Plato's Retreat, threesomes, and sexual fantasies. “He transformed himself,” she says also, “from a self-pitying alcoholic into a campaigner who gave speeches for Republican candidates and causes all over the United States. His reward would be a seat on the Supreme Court.” But, in her words, “He had turned into a bully, a religious hypocrite, and a very angry man as a result of the masks that he had to wear in order to please the Republican conservatives and evangelicals who would support his nomination.”

Wall Street has created a “moral” universe that elevates short-term profits into the ultimate “good,” rewarding those who can achieve them with massive bonuses. The movie Margin Call follows these players when their universe collapses, writes Lisa Pease.

What would you do if you had knowledge of an imminent catastrophe that you had no power to stop? That was the question that inspired the new film “Margin Call” from writer/director J.C. Chandor.

Based on the financial crisis of 2008, the film is a tightly paced, highly suspenseful look at the first 36 hours of a meltdown from the viewpoint of a few key people in a Lehman Brothers-like investment firm. The damage has already been done, and there’s no way to reverse it. The characters are faced with Hobson’s choices that leave little room for moral concerns.