and pakistan. clinton just left libya. the visit there was the first by a cabinet-level official since the overthrow of moammar gadhafi. there are reports that turkish forces killed 15 militants in iraq. they were in pursuit of kurdish rebels. the fighters have waged a campaign for a separate state for several decades. france s president and first lady welcomed a baby girl wednesday night. a close family friend says she is doing well after giving birth to the first baby born to a sitting french president. nicolas sarkozy visited his wife and new daughter in a paris hospital a few hours after the girl was born. those are the headlines. i m zain vergee and world business today starts now. good morning, from cnn london, i m nina dos santos. and a very good afternoon from cnn hong kong, i m andrew stevens. welcome to world business today. the top stories this thursday, october 20th, you re looking at live pictures of crowds gathering in athens, constitution square
austerity measures now before the 28th of june. otherwise, the market will be very concerned that this government could still default on its sovereign debt. markets a little edgy today coming into your open today as we pass one hurdle. there is still a long way to go in the greek debt story. amazing he survived that vote. back in the united states, a big settlement for banking giant jp morgan. how much did they have to give up and why? yeah. it was a lot of money. $156 million. that was the amount handed over as a result of this sec investigation. it all relates to a collateralized debt obligation on the mortgage market. this was a fund called cdo 2007-1. it s alleged jp morgan knew it was making losses and they still sold it to investors. so they settled with the sec. back to you. essentially selling a fraud
products, collateralized debt obligation, and then also advising their clients to shourd it, to predict it would decrease in value. talking out of both sides of their mouth at the same time. now goldman sachs is trying to lay it on like 1 31-year-old young trader as if there was a rogue in their outfit instead of it being something that was reflective of systemic problems at one of our, in the past, best respected financial firms. jonathan, doesn t this, for lack of a better term, grease the skids for financial reform? i mean, how can the republicans stand in the way of financial reform when you ve got the major firm being charged with fraud? well, i think they will anyway. they re pretty dug in into their position. mitch mcconnell is in this kind of orwellian world where even
lenders wanting to make more money the lenders would then sell the mortgages to investment banks the mortgage contracts for them bundled by these investment banks like lehman brothers with other loans to create a new financial products called collateralized debt obligation all c.d.o. unknown to most homeowners their mortgage payments that were packaged with other loans for them sold and traded to institutional buyers all over the globe securitization became the tool that turned mortgage payments into even more wealth for financial empires business triples over six years in two thousand and six alone the top ten investment bankers sold one point five trillion u.s. dollars worth of mortgage securities and even for the regulators this seemed like the perfect way for more people to live the american dream of owning their own home regulators saw the positive benefits of actually security. because they were they