A one-off charge has left Bank of America - the US's biggest bank - with a loss of $7.3bn (£4.8bn) for the third quarter of the year.
The charge - of more than $10bn - is designed to reflect the lower value of its credit and debit card business whose profits will be affected by new regulations curbing charges.
The bank had warned it would make the charge in its last earnings report.
Meanwhile profits at Goldman Sachs fell 43% but still beat analysts' forecasts.
Goldman reported net earnings of $1.74bn for the third quarter, down from the $3.03bn it reported a year ago.
Revenue fell 28% to $8.9bn, but still came in well ahead of the $7.9bn analysts had expected.
The market had been expecting Goldman's earnings to fall because of slower trading, and the bank's results statement showed revenue from trading was down 36% on a year ago.
But revenue at its investment banking unit rose 24% to $1.12bn, as low interest rates benefited the division.
Goldman, which has often been criticised for its pay practices, set aside $3.83bn for compensation in the third quarter, bringing its total pay pot to $13.12 billion for the first nine months of the year, down 21% from a year ago.
Customer incentives
Bank of America also said it planned to change its consumer banking strategy.
It said it would focus on giving customers incentives to do more business with the bank, rather than generating revenue through penalty fees, like overdraft charges.
Excluding the one-time charge, Bank of America's earnings report showed it made $3.1bn in the three months ending in September, far better than analysts were expecting.
That was largely because of a sharp drop in losses tied to defaulting loans.
In the third quarter of last year, the bank reported a loss of $2.2bn.
Its results mirror those of JP Morgan and Citigroup, which were also better than expected.
Foreclosure crisis
Bank of America and other banks have been stung in recent weeks by accusations that they failed to review properly documents used in repossessions - so-called robo-signings.
Bank of America had stopped its foreclosure process in all 50 states, but said on Monday that it would resume proceedings in 23 states after reviewing its cases there.
On Tuesday, the White House warned banks that it would hold them accountable for any illegal mortgage practices, with US regulators set to meet on Wednesday to discuss the issue.
Meanwhile, a Bloomberg report said a group of investors have accused Bank of America of inappropriately bundling some mortgages into $16.5bn of bonds.
The report said that money management firm BlackRock, bond investment fund Pimco and the New York Federal Reserve were among the investors, who want to force the bank to repurchase $47bn in mortgage bonds.
The report spooked investors, with Bank of America shares shedding 4.4%.
Thousands of high-tech companies descend on Las Vegas each year for the Comdex convention, gambling that their idea will make them the next internet millionaires.
For one week each year, the glitter and glamour of Las Vegas gives way thoughts of websites and widgets.
Comdex is the biggest week on the high-tech calendar when more than 2,000 companies show an estimated 200,000 visitors a glimpse of the future.
The future, sans PC?
At a preview session on Sunday, convention goes made an unseemly scramble to see the latest electronic devices, which promise simple, hassle-free access to the internet.
The BBC's Philippa Thomas
As each new appliance was ceremonially unveiled, delegates jumped on chairs for a better view; brought out their digital cameras; and shouted excited questions about memory, capacity and function.
These so-called internet appliances are getting the biggest buzz at Comdex this year, products that some industry watchers say spells the beginning of the Post-PC era.
The personal computer and the hardware and software to support it have dominated Comdex for most of its 20 year history.
But Phil Terry of the research group Creative Good told delegates here that technology companies in Europe and Asia should strive to avoid the mistakes being made in the US.
The biggest mistake of all, he says, is ignoring the mass-market customer - the average computer user who wants to use the web, without the bother of doing any technical homework.
Post-PC, post-Microsoft?
Much of the buzz was of course about the future of Microsoft.
The big question: is this 20th Century corporate giant sliding past its peak? Will the Post-PC era mean the end of the Microsoft Empire?
We may be in the "post-PC era" with the consumer demanding quicker, easier, cheaper access to the web, but Microsoft is making it clear they are determined to hang on in there.
Working with the consumer electronics company Vestel, Microsoft this week is promoting a new machine which offers instant access to the internet.
It will be sold as "plug and play", allowing the user one-button access to e-mail, chat, and shopping on the web. Of course, it takes you directly to a Microsoft site, but that is to be expected. Bill Gates has come a long way since he dismissed the internet as a passing fad.
Corporate America plays catch-up
Some of those already dealing in internet-based technologies can afford to gloat. Wall Street is obsessed with internet stocks, and the traditional corporations are frantically playing catch-up.
As one internet guru, Howard Anderson of The Yankee Group, puts it, the big companies are simultaneously threatened and offered great opportunities by the World Wide Web.
The first stage is denial - why should this matter to me?
The second stage is anger - why am I so unprepared to deal with this?
Then comes grudging acceptance
Finally wholesale adoption
Well, that is the progression if they are going to survive.
The message from the technology leaders is bullish: Either join our revolution or prepare to join the scrap heap.
KISS - Keep it simple stupid
But internet pioneers, who saw the light early and embraced the global network, cannot rest on their laurels, according to another leading analyst of industry trends.
Phil Terry of the research group Creative Good said that it is not only computers that are too complex and confusing but websites as well.
Look at the billions of dollars expected to be spent online on Christmas presents, he said, and then look at how many people are browsing the sites without dipping into their wallets.
Potential customers find it just too complicated. The so-called "conversion rate" of visitors to buyers is, on average, less than 1%.
In his words, most websites are simply flushing money down the toilet.
The message was that the industry can afford to congratulate itself, but it could do very much better
Unemployment in the UK fell again in October, while the number of people in work rose to a new record.
Official figures show that the number of people claiming benefit fell by 8,400 to 1,204,000 - the lowest figure since April 1980.
The unemployment rate remained at 4.2%, also the lowest for almost 20 years.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) quarterly total for July to September, which includes people looking for work but not eligible for benefit, fell by 39,000 to 1,721,000 - a rate of 5.9%.
Record employment
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures also show that the number of people in work has risen to a new record of 27.5m - an increase of 329,000 in the year.
The rise means the employment rate now stands at 74.2% - the highest since spring 1990.
The Employment Minister, Tessa Jowell, said: "This record number of people in jobs clearly shows that the government's policies of moving people from welfare into work and of making work pay are taking effect.
"We have low interest rates and low inflation. The key challenge now is to continue to steer a course of stability and steady growth and ensure there is no return to boom and bust."
Manufacturing hit
Despite the healthy employment figures, the ONS reported a continuing decline in manufacturing jobs, down by 156,000 to 3,971,000 in the three months to September.
The largest fall has been in textiles and leather firms, while nuclear fuels and coke reported increases.
Manufacturing productivity in the same quarter was 4.3% higher than a year ago, while unit wage costs in the sector were 0.3% lower.
The number of new vacancies notified to job centres last month increased by 7,800 to a near-record 240,600, while the stock of unfilled jobs was up by 24,400 in October to 340,800.
The claimant count fell in every region of the UK in October.
The figures also revealed a big increase in the number of people in part-time jobs - up by 28,000 in the three months to September to 6.83m.
India is replacing a controversial foreign exchange law with a more liberal act so as to encourage outside investment.
The old Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (Fera), which has now been revoked, was disliked by traders and businessmen who frequently criticised what they termed its harsh provisions.
Fera came into existence in 1973, and since then many top industrialists and businessmen fell foul of its provisions.
Suspects accused of violating the law were often detained for questioning, and faced the prospect of a prison sentence if they were found guilty.
Deregulation
But under the new Foreign Exchange Management Act (Fema), which comes into force on Thursday, suspected foreign exchange violations are treated as civil rather than criminal offences.
India is attracting more foreign investment
Financial experts say Fera was devised and implemented when India had a highly regulated economy, and when foreign investment was either not allowed or regarded with much suspicion.
All that changed in 1993, when India liberalised its economy and started to attract a lot more overseas investment.
Since then there has been a substantial increase in India's foreign exchange reserves.
Foreign trade has increased, tariffs have been curtailed and foreign institutions are allowed far greater access to its stock markets.
The new law, experts say, reflects the ongoing desire of the financial authorities to attract more foreign investment and promote exports.
However the authorities have made clear that although Fera is repealed, it still applies to offences committed before its abolition.
There are nearly 7,000 cases pending, some of which are in an advanced stage of investigation.
One of those being investigated for foreign exchange violations is the son of a former Prime Minister, P V Narasimha Rao.
Average turnover on the world's foreign exchange (forex) markets reached almost $1,500bn a day in April this year, according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
The volume of forex trading is far greater than the size of foreign currency reserves held by any country.
The size of forex trade has played its part in the currency crises of emerging nations over the past year.
The exact figure, $1,490bn, or $1.49 trillion, is 26% higher than when the BIS, which represents central banks, last measured flows in 43 different countries three years ago.
Centred in London
Almost a third of all forex trading occurs in London, by far the world's largest centre, with New York and Tokyo second and third.
US dollar and yen most traded
At current values, transactions involving US dollars on side of the trade accounted for 87% of forex business. The Japanese Yen was the second-most traded currency.
However, less than half the transactions were simple 'spot' deals, the immediate purchase of currency for commercial transactions.
Most forex trading is on the futures market where currency buyers undertake to buy at a set price at a specified date in the future.
Futures gambling
Foreign exchange futures allow companies to plan their import, export and foreign investment operations with the certainty of knowing what will be the value of the currencies they trade in.
George Soros: forex speculator
However, increasingly the forex futures market is home to rich individuals and 'hedge funds' who speculate against currency movements attempting reap windfall gains.
George Soros is the most high-profile example of such currency speculators.
The advent of the euro next year is expected start to stem the sharp increases in forex dealings as eleven European currencies consolidate into one over the next three years.
Global crises
The figures shed some light on how financial crises began in emerging economies over the last year.
The ability for massive daily foreign currency flows to take place made possible the almost overnight collapses of the currencies of countries like Thailand, Indonesia and Russia.
As confidence in the economies of these countries fell away, demand for their currencies fell as investors took their capital out or stopped bringing it in.
Governments had tried to buy their own currencies to underpin their value but couldn't keep up with the sellers.
When they stopped their own forex activity, the forces of demand and supply saw the baht, rupiah and rouble in turn crash in value deepening the crisis of confidence and economic slowdown.
Speculators constantly watching for these market developments hastened the process
Google has no plans to resume using its Street View cars to collect information about the location of Wi-Fi networks, a practice that led to a flurry of privacy probes after the company said it unintentionally captured fragments of unencrypted data.
The disclosure appeared in a report on Street View released today by Canadian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, who said that "collection is discontinued and Google has no plans to resume it." Assembling an extensive list of the location of Wi-Fi access points can aid in geolocation, especially in areas where connections to cell towers are unreliable.
Instead, Stoddart said that, based on her conversations with headquarters in Mountain View, Ca., "Google intends to obtain the information needed to populate its location-based services database" from "users' handsets."
That, at least, should come as no surprise. As CNET reported in June, mobile phone and laptop users who run certain Google applications already share their location information with the company, which then uses this crowdsourced data to refine its mapping capabilities.
When Google Maps Navigation users requests a location fix with the "use wireless networks" option checked in their settings, their device sends over a list of all nearby addresses associated with wireless hot spots, which can in turn be checked against Google's existing database of those addresses gathered through the Street View project. Google has said it doesn't collect information about laptops or other mobile devices--both for privacy reasons and because the locations are typically transitory.
Google's PC software takes a similar approach. A note in the source code of Google's open-source Chromium browser, which shares code with Google Chrome, says "currently we get only MAC address, signal strength, channel signal-to-noise and SSID" for each Wi-Fi network surveyed. (The MAC address is unique for each wireless access point, and the SSID is the user-given name for the wireless network.)
Google discloses this behavior to its customers. Its privacy policy for mobile devices says: "If you use location-enabled products and services, such as Google Maps for mobile, you may be sending us location information." On the other hand, if you opt out of data-sharing, don't count on being able to use Wi-Fi hot spots for triangulation.
"With Android, location-sharing is opt-in," Google spokeswoman Christine Chen said today. "Whether we're talking about location provider services or individual apps that use location, Android provides users with notice and control over collection of location, sharing of location and use of location to help provide a better mobile experience...We don't share individual location collected from user devices with any applications or services."
Google had said in a blog post in July that it had halted Wi-Fi data collection through its Street View cars, but had not said whether it would be resumed or not.
Here are instructions for mobile users on how to disable this feature.
Microsoft software head Ray Ozzie resigns
Mr Ozzie championed "cloud computing", which can provide resources to multiple computers via the web
Ray Ozzie, chief software architect of Microsoft and proponent of cloud computing, has resigned unexpectedly.
Mr Ozzie was a top member of the company's management, having taken over the software role from Bill Gates.
Chief executive Steve Ballmer announced his colleague's departure in an email to company staff.
He said Mr Ozzie would remain with Microsoft during a transitional period, and that the company was not looking for anyone to replace him.
Microsoft shares dropped 2.2% in after-hours trading on the news.
Unknown direction
"With our progress in services and the cloud now full speed ahead in all aspects of our business, Ray and I are announcing today Ray's intention to step down from his role as chief software architect," said Mr Ballmer in his email.
He added that Mr Ozzie would focus on "the broader area of entertainment, where Microsoft has many ongoing investments".
Nonetheless, his resignation may cast some doubt over the technological direction Microsoft will take next.
Mr Ozzie's decision to step down also follows a number of other senior departures at the company.
Business head Stephen Elop left in September to head up Nokia, while entertainment and devices head Robbie Bach is also planning to leave.
Cloud computing
Mr Ozzie joined the firm in 2005 as chief technology officer after his own company was bought out by Microsoft.
A year after his arrival, he successfully pushed the software leviathan towards tackling the challenge of the internet, by adopting "cloud computing" technology.
Microsoft traditionally focused on desktop computers, but Mr Ozzie convinced management that in the future, processing power and functionality would be provided remotely via the web.
Previously, he also designed the Lotus Notes system, which allows groups to share documents and emails.