Morgan Stanley

There's never a dull moment on Wall Street. Next week brings a Xoom-related media event from Verizon and Motorola Mobility, as well as fourth quarter results from Apple and several of the country's biggest financial institutions.

In 2001, Nicole B. Simpson was just another Morgan Stanley financial planner on the 73rd floor when the 9/11 attacks struck. She survived, but the emotional trauma left her old life in the wreckage. Eventually, though, she found a new purpose in helping others through traumas of their own.

In a cost-cutting move, Swiss banking giant UBS announced that it would trim 3,500 people from its workforce. Most of the cuts, which are expected to save $2.5 billion in annual costs, will be in the firm's underperforming investment banking unit. It's the latest in a string of big bank layoffs. Who could be next?

Devon Fleming's casting call for her planned reality TV series, Wall Street Wives, attracted the media attention that producers relish, and hundreds of women responded. She allowed The Price of Fame to attend a recent audition, where we got a glimpse of the sort of drama the show might deliver.

Wall Street can be fickle, leaving investors scratching their heads in bewilderment. Some of last week's biggest surprises, blunders, and flat-out bone-headed moves included Morgan Stanley's downgrading of Google, another step toward a LivingSocial IPO, and irrational exuberance with respect to Wendy's stock.

Millions of Americans don't have bank accounts, and with interest rates falling and data breaches rise, more may follow them out of the banking system. But there's a new reason to stash your cash under a floorboard instead of in a bank: The looming debt ceiling crisis.

Biofuels company Solazyme owns a unique process when it comes to converting algae into a fuel could replace the gas in your car -- a method that could be used to create oil on an extremely large scale and at an extremely low cost. The company has just announced it's going public: You might want to get in on the action.