Reverse Spin: Calling for the head of Fed honcho

It’s a wonder that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan hasn’t been dragged out to the town square and stoned.

The uproar for a steep Federal Reserve interest rate cut reached a fever pitch Wednesday as Monday’s stock market massacre had many disgruntled investors seeing red.

CNBC, the cable television business channel, said it received e-mails Wednesday from viewers calling for Mr. Greenspan’s resignation. “The Fed is the easiest, most handy scapegoat,” said Bill Meehan, chief stock market analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. in New York.

“Greenspan is the devil incarnate from the point of view of ordinary Americans. Some people have seen 80% of their pension funds wiped out.” Most analysts are expecting the Fed’s monetary policy arm to cut rates by three-quarters of a percentage point when it meets tomorrow.

No Oracle miracle

* In this market environment, there’s a lot to be said for holding one’s own.

Oracle Corp., the world’s second-largest software maker, said Thursday that the flailing economy dampened its database and application software sales in the last quarter.

But the Redwood Shores, Calif., company also said that earnings rose to $583 million, or 10 cents a share, in its fiscal third quarter ended Feb. 28, from $503 million, or 8 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter.

The results were in line with Oracle’s warning March 1, when it cut its forecast to 10 cents per share, from the 12 cents analysts were expecting. The company said it was too difficult to predict the outlook for the fourth quarter.

Shopping drops

* I feel a shopping spree coming.

U.S. retail sales fell in February for the first time since November 2000, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Retail sales dropped unexpectedly last month by 0.2% to $274.49 billion after an upwardly revised 1.3% rise in January.

Still, analysts say we should remain calm. “I think the interpretation of this is that so far this year [we are] off to a rocky start, but not a disastrous start,” said Bill Cheney, an economist with John Hancock Financial Services Inc. in Boston.

Who reads reports? The SEC, for one

* Looks like the Securities and Exchange Commission has a pretty ambitious reading list. The watchdog agency said Wednesday that next month it would inspect thousands of annual reports for signs of revenue manipulation.

The agency’s annual review will cover the reports of as many as 3,000 companies, about 25% of all U.S. public corporations.

That’s almost four times the number of reports that were examined last year.

The SEC also intends to apply rigorous new federal standards on how companies should record revenue.

Bringing online brokers in line

* Online broker-dealers soon may have a new set of rules and regulations for giving clients advice.

The regulatory arm of the National Association of Securities Dealers plans to publish guidelines, perhaps this week, that would force firms to examine the risk profiles of their clients when they sell them securities, according to a published report.

Online broker-dealers would have to consider whether the securities they sell fit a client’s needs and tolerance for risk, a mandate that traditional firms have to follow.

Executives at online broker-dealers said they would defer comment until the regs are published.