Rajat Gupta, a former director of Goldman Sachs, was arrested this morning on federal insider trading charges. He's reportedly accused of, among other things, tipping off convicted billionaire Raj Rajaratnam to Warren Buffett's $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs in 2008.

Citigroup has agreed to pay $285 million to settle charges that it packaged and sold a bunch of mortgage-backed securities in 2007 that it knew would drop in value, and then bet that they would in fact drop in value, making money off the suckers it sold them to.

It's been a rough day for Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. His company reported a humiliating $428 million quarterly loss this morning, just the second in Goldman's 12-year history as a public company. We figured he might like a sympathy call from the Occupy Wall Street folks, who know how to get by with less. Here's his cell phone number.

Be sure to send a congratulatory greeting card and $5 to your friend Bank of America, which has just posted third-quarter profits higher than last year's. About $6.23 billion! Not a bad showing. However, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. has surpassed them in assets, so those upcoming debit card fees are still necessary if you want Bank of America to stay in business and keep producing jobs.

This video shows some Occupy Santa Cruz (California) protesters trying to close their accounts at Bank of America and being told they can't protest and be customers at the same time. It says so in the U.S. Constitution!

Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit told a Fortune conference on Wednesday that he "would be happy to talk to" Occupy Wall Street protesters "any time they want." That's so cool of him! Here's his cell phone number. He's waiting for your call.

Time's Michael Scherer digs up this photo from the Romney media archives showing our man Mittens and his old Bain Capital buddies playing with money.

Former hedge fund heavyweight Raj Rajaratnam will do a dime and change in federal prison for his insider trading conviction.

All of you Goldman Sachs employees who are schizophrenic suffering from [personality-affective mental disorder] and therefore thought that you'd go on down to Zucotti Park and protest yourself: your employer would rather that you not. John Carney reports:

Bank of America is raising its fees. Citibank is raising its fees. Chase destroys lives. What's a frustrated, checkbook-owning 99 percenter to do? An LA art gallery owner has a suggestion: On November 5, celebrate Bank Transfer Day and ditch your corporate bank.

Not to be outdone by Bank of America's rank avarice, Citibank announced today that it's raising monthly fees for checking accounts—doubling them, in fact, for its mid-level option—and bumping up the minimum balances. They're basically looking at their customers, identifying the ones who have the least amount of money, and charging them more.

With falling stock prices, debit-card users flipping out about the company's plan to steal $5 from them every month, and a brand-new lawsuit on their hot little hands, the devil worshipers at Bank of America aren't too thrilled about reporters talking to their customers right now. But journalists must report on the news, and so the Arkansas correspondent for the New York Times stopped by a branch in Fayetteville to get some customer feedback on the bank's latest thieving scheme. B of A did not appreciate that very much.

Bank of America's web site has been intermittently down today, which happens to be one day after the company announced a new policy of charging customers for the right to access the money that they gave to Bank of America (think of it as a negative interest rate).

I have an idea: I ask you to loan me some money. Then when it's time for me to pay you back, I'll charge you a fee, for holding that money, and another fee, for giving the money back to you. Welcome to the modern American consumer banking system.

You like your precious "free checking?" I bet you do. More like freeloader checking. Sadly, your "free checking" is hurting the needy banking industry, which is why it is going to disappear.

Alex Schaefer, an artist in Los Angeles, just sold this painting of a burning Chase bank branch on eBay for a cool $25,000. Great imagery! It helped that he got a shitload of publicity, from two(!) police investigations.

Things are going about as expected for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman when he decided to take on the full brunt of the White House and the largest megabanks in the country by trying to investigate the full load of their mortgage-related crimes over the past decade: Somewhat difficultly.

Remember when Goldman Sachs was a remorseless, cruelly efficient monolith run by soulless machines intent on harvesting wealth at the expense of the global economy and without regard to consequences?

Here's a supremely creepy clip of a Bank of America executive — perhaps, say, its director of public policy? — walking up to Rick Perry at a New Hampshire event on Wednesday and saying "Bank of America. We will help you out." Well, we know that the governor appreciates a nice gift.

Are you feeling the heat from debt collectors? Or maybe you just aren't sure how you'll make your next credit card payment? Whatever the case, just be thankful you don't owe money to Citibank in Indonesia. And if you do, don't accept an invitation to settle in the bank's interrogation room.