The news at a glance

Banking: Moody’s downgrades 15 firms

Fifteen of the world’s biggest financial firms had their credit ratings cut last week, a reflection of the institutions’ persistent weaknesses since the financial crisis, said Peter Eavis and Susanne Craig in The New York Times. Credit ratings agency Moody’s downgraded JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs, among others, saying that all of the banks have “significant exposure” to market volatility and are at risk of large losses in another downturn. The lower ratings could make it more expensive for banks to borrow money, particularly Citigroup and Bank of America, which are now within two levels of a junk rating.

The move by Moody’s wasn’t unexpected, said Dakin Campbell and Michael J. Moore in Bloomberg.com, and shares of bank stocks largely rallied when the downgrades proved no worse than anticipated. “The market is shrugging it off,” said investment manager George Strickland. Some investors criticized Moody’s for not taking sufficient account of some banks’ efforts to lower their risk profiles in recent years, and accused the ratings agency of trying to make up for its rose-tinted assessments in the past. The downgrades, said credit analyst James Leonard, are “a mea culpa from 2007 and 2008.”

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Congress: Actively trading while legislating

Some 130 congressmen or their families traded stocks in companies that were lobbying on bills before the lawmakers’ committees between 2007 and 2010, said Dan Keating, David S. Fallis, Kimberly Kindy, and Scott Higham in The Washington Post. An analysis of congressional stock transactions shows that 34 members of Congress also “recast their financial portfolios during the financial crisis” after secret meetings with top officials. The analysis “does not provide evidence of insider trading,” but it shows that lawmakers “routinely make trades that raise questions about potential conflicts.”

Internet: Google CEO’s health questioned

There’s speculation that 39-year-old Google CEO Larry Page may have a serious medical condition, said Amir Efrati and Joann S. Lublin in The Wall Street Journal. Page missed last week’s annual stockholders’ meeting, as well as Google’s annual developers’ conference this week—absences that Google said were the result of Page having “lost his voice.” The company provided no other information about Page’s condition, but in an email to employees, Page wrote that “there is nothing seriously wrong with me” and that he will “continue to run the company.”

Tech: Microsoft’s big bet on social enterprise

Microsoft agreed to pay $1.2 billion this week for Yammer, a kind of Facebook for the business world, said Richard Waters and April Dembosky in the Financial Times. Yammer allows businesses to create private social networks, where employees can post announcements, share files, and swap messages. Some 5 million workers already use the service, including employees at 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and Microsoft hopes to integrate the social-networking tool alongside its traditional business software. The Yammer deal is Microsoft’s biggest acquisition since it purchased Skype last year for $8.5 billion.

Housing: New homes selling faster

Sales of new homes increased 7.6 percent in May, a welcome sign that the housing market continues a steady, if slow, recovery, said Martin Crutsinger in the Associated Press. Sales jumped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 369,000 homes, the fastest pace since April 2010, the last month of the federal home-buying tax credit. However, “even with the gains,” the annual sales pace is only about half the 700,000 that economists “consider to be healthy.”