To the Point

Wall Street Settlement

The collapse of Enron, Global Crossing and World Com had investors reeling. Now, ten Wall Street brokerage firms and two stock analysts have made a deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Without admitting any wrongdoing, they've agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle charges that they defrauded investors of many billions. Critics claim that Wall Street is still full of conflicts of interest, but the brokerages insist that tougher rules would remove the risk from a business that-s supposed to be risky. What are the victims- chances of recovering their losses? What are the chances that Wall Street won-t do it again? We hear from a former Wall Street lawyer, a law school dean who has authored over 20 securities-related books, financial analyst Juli Nieman, the editor of The Corporate Library, and a man who says he lost more than $455,000 after following the advice of one stock analyst. Making News: US Changes the Guard in Iraq In Iraq, there is regime change of a different kind today. Former State Department official Paul Bremer has arrived to take over from retired General Jay Garner as America-s top civilian administrator. David Rennie, who reports from Washington for London-s Daily Telegraph, addresses the symbolic shift from a military to a civilian leader, and US expectations in the ongoing search for weapons of mass destruction. Reporter's Notebook: Jayson Blair and the New York Times' Mea Culpa He was an up-and-comer, a roving national correspondent assigned to major stories, until yesterday, when the New York Times admitted that Jayson Blair was a fraud. The front-page mea culpa studies 73 stories, finding 38 -unreliable,- with factual errors in 17, plagiarism in 6. In 29 occasions, Blair claimed to be reporting from places he-d never been. Keith Woods, who teaches reporting at the Poynter Institute, examines journalism's latest ethical breach.