Deposits in German banks rose 4.4 percent against the year before, as uh, Greeks, Spanish and Irish wised up.

European takeovers are down 23 percent year-to-date, by the way.

Ben speaks: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the central bank was watching the European situation closely, but gave no indication that further monetary stimulus was imminent.

The Fed will hold all U.S. banks to the regulatory schema known as Basel III, and The Wall Street Journal is shocked that smaller lenders weren't exempted.

Mr. Bernanke also warned Congress not to ignore the so-called fiscal cliff that arrives when Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2012. “If you all go on vacation, it’s still going to happen,” he said.

Here all week: The New York Times' Peter Lattman reports on Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein's testimony yesterday in U.S. v. Gupta. “You became the No. 1 person at Goldman Sachs,” [defense counsel Gary P.] Naftalis said. Mr. Blankfein corrected him. “Chairman and chief executive is my official title,” Mr. Blankfein said. He then broke into a smile. “No. 1’s not an official title.” Blankfein will testify today, as the trial drags on.

Shareholders spring: Chesapeake Energy holds its annual shareholder meeting today in Oklahoma City. Could be a good one.

So sorry: Nomura Holdings apologized to shareholders for its involvement in three insider-trading cases.

Oops: Floyd Norris says MF Global was yet another case of accounting practices that "produced profits that vanished before they were actually realized."

After Goldman: Paul Deighton, a Goldman Sachs investment banker for 22 years, is the guy running the show at the London Olympics.

Banker passes: Former Wachovia chief executive officer John Medlin died at 78.

Facebook limbo: It's not lost on the Wall Street Journal that investors who bought Facebook shares on the pre-IPO market are stuck with Zuck's plummeting stock until November. (That's when the lock-up period that bars employees from selling shares in the 90 days after the IPO ends.)

Life of Aubrey: Chesapeake Energy founder and chief executive Aubrey K. McClendon leads a lavish and highly leveraged life, Reuters reports. Among the findings: Chesapeake employees charged with conducting Mr. McClendon's personal business, extensive use of company jets, sometimes for dubious business purpose, and loans against Mr. McClendon's stake in the Oklahoma City Thunder, the NBA franchise in which the Chesapeake boss is part-owner.

Winnowing: Goldman Sachs is expected to name fewer than 100 partners this year, one of the smallest classes in recent memory, the New York Times reports, as the firm shrinks staff in response to lower revenue. Goldman has cut its headcount by about 8 percent in the last year, and axed about 50 employees last week. (In 2010, Goldman named 110 partners; in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, the firm named 94 partners.)

Whither Europe: Spain sold debt, so that was good.

When capital isn't enough: Morgan Stanley is the best-capitalized Wall Street bank. That may make regulators happy, but the firm faces the biggest ratings downgrade from Moody's and trades at the greatest discount to liquidation value.

Prosecution rests: The government is expected to conclude its case in U.S. v. Gupta today.

Occupy no more? Reuters wonders if Occupy Wall Street is over.

Can we meet in the middle? R. Allen Stanford says time served is probably enough; the government, which won a conviction against Mr. Stanford for operating a $7 billion Ponzi scheme, recommended a sentence of 230 years.

Blow back: Jamie Dimon went on Meet the Press and said JPMorgan was "dead wrong" to dismiss early stories of the massive position in credit derivatives accumulated by the bank's chief investment office and the trader nicknamed the London whale. “We got very defensive, and people started justifying everything we did,” Dimon said.

Ina Drew, the JPMorgan executive who loves crisis, is expected to resign today after the bank lost more than $2 billion on a credit derivatives trade she oversaw. Achilles Macris, the executive who oversaw the London-based operation that placed the trades, and trader Javier Marin-Artajo, are also on their way out, the Wall Street Journal reports.

It appears the chief investment office's entire London operation could be dismissed.

Cover up: Who knows what would have happened if Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson had come clean about his resume from the start—in the end it was Mr. Thompson's lie about how the gratuitous degree in computer science first appeared that led to the executive's resignation.

Yahoo named Ross B. Levinsohn—its head of global media and the former News Corp. exec who presided over that company's $580 million takeover of MySpace—as interim CEO.

Meanwhile, Third Point Capital, which led the call for Mr. Thompson's resignation, will end its proxy fight after Yahoo agreed to give the hedge fund three seats on its board of directors, including one to Third Point founder Dan Loeb.

Love letter:  Noster Capital, a London-based hedge fund that owns a small stake in Chesapeake Energy, is calling on CEO Aubrey McClendon to step down. Noster cited more than $1 billion in personal loans secured by Mr. McCLendon's stake in Chesapeake wells, the recent disclosure of off-balance sheet liabilities and...the catering in a letter signed by founder Pedro de Noronha.

Activist investor Carl Icahn, meanwhile, is expected to disclose that he has taken a large stake in Chesapeake.

Filing looms: The board of directors for Residential Capital, the mortgage unit at Ally Financial, is on the verge of filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Fortress Investment Group is expected to bid $2.4 billion for the majority of ResCap's assets when the long awaited filing goes through, while the Times lists hedge fund Elliot Management as among the Ally investors that oppose an asset sale.

Filing looms, too: LightSquared executives spent the weekend prepping for bankruptcy court, after negotiations with lenders stalled. LightSquared, the wireless venture backed by Phil Falcone's Harbinger Capital, has until 5 p.m. today to reach an agreement with lenders.

Greek re-vote: Alexis Tsipras, the Syriza party leader who would tear up the rescue plan struck with the European Union, is poised to finish first in the next round of Greek elections, raising the specter of a messy eurozone divorce.

Sales call: Avon is considering a $10.7 billion takeover offer from rival Coty, after rebuffing previous advances.

[DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images]

Spain agreed to an independent audit of its financial system as the nation's government seeks to head off concerns that bank bailouts are pushing public finances to the brink of collapse.

Failure to form a governing coalition could prompt a second round of elections in Greece.

The leftist Syriza party reiterated to European officials that it believes the debt deal signed by the previous Greek government is invalid.

Chesapeake Energy faces $1.4 billion in previously unreported liabilities.

David Weber, the SEC's new assistant inspector general for investigations, was placed on leave and banned from entering agency HQ after telling c0lleagues that he wanted to carry a concealed firearm into the office.

Reports surfaced earlier this week that SEC had ordered an independent investigation into complaints of sexual harassment in its inspector general's office.

The Facebook IPO is already oversubscribed, according to Reuters. The offering is generating weaker-than-expected demand, according to Bloomberg.

Yahoo! chief Scott Thompson told top executives that he never submitted a resume or inaccurate information about his background to the company, raising the question of how the inaccuracy wound up in SEC filings.

Morgan Stanley asked hedge fund run by former co-president Zoe Cruz to return funds last month, ahead of Ms. Cruz announcing yesterday that she would close the fund.

Former Lazard CEO William Loomis is back in an advisory role, UBS hired Peter Riccile as global c0-head of real estate, leisure and lodging investment banking and Societe General was said to hire Francis Repka as its CEO for Brazil.

Greenlight Capital founder David Einhorn won the seventh annual Hillel Texas Hold 'Em tournament, helping to raise $500,000 to promote Jewish engagement on college campuses.

Bad gas: From 2004 to 2008, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon ran a private hedge fund that traded the same commodities that Chesapeake produced, according to Reuters. The $200 million fund listed Chesapeake's Oklahoma City HQ as its mailing address, and employed an accountant who was also on staff at the natural gas powerhouse. Marketing the fund, we expect, was a breeze.

McClendon addressed media for the first time since he was stripped of his chairmanship, but wouldn't discuss reported conflicts of interest: "Your mother told you not to believe everything you read or hear for good reason,” he said.

Phoenix falls: Merger discussions between New York law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf and SNR Denton fell through yesterday, raising the chances that Dewey will collapse under the weight of its debt burden and partner exodus. Chances for a deal, which SNR Denton brass nicknamed "A Phoenix Rises from the Ashes," diminished after Dewey announced that the Manhattan's district attorney had opened a criminal investigation into the firm, according to the Journal.

Priced to sell: Carlyle Group closed its IPO at $22 a share, valuing the company at $6.7 billion, after the private equity firm lowered its asking price from the $23 to $25 range it had sought. The lower price reflects skittishness after previous private equity IPOs lost value, but founders Bill Conway, Daniel D'Aniello and David Rubenstein will make out fine: Each retains about 15 percent ownership in the company.

The D.C.-based firm will trade on Nasdaq under the CG ticker.

Class warfare: At a meeting with Obama campaign manager Jim Messina last fall, a wealthy donor asked whether there was anything the president could do to stop attacks on the rich, Nicholas Confessore reports in the forthcoming Times Sunday Magazine:

The president had won plaudits for his speech on race during the last campaign, the guest noted. It was a soaring address that acknowledged white resentment and urged national unity. What if Obama gave a similarly healing speech about class and inequality? What if he urged an end to attacks on the rich?

It's a brilliant anecdote, and a not not alarming bit of self-pity and conflated identification. But there's something about the nakedness of the appeal that disarms: Isn't it our right, the donor seemed to be asking, to be rich?

(H/T Greg Sargent.)

Off again, on again: So much for the hope (in some quarters) that the Volcker rule would be scrapped. Jamie Dimon led a cadre of bank chieftains into a meeting with Fed governor Daniel Tarullo yesterday, presumably to criticize the rule. Nonetheless, the Dealbook reports that regulators are hammering out the final language, and think they're back on track to meet the July deadline set forth in Dodd-Frank.

North rises: Canadian banks have gone on a buying spree as U.S. and European banks shed assets in the wake of impending doom, with the six largest banks from the Great White North dropping a cool $38 billion on acquisitions since 2008. The upshot: Canada is home to four of the world's top 10 strongest banks, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports. (JPMorgan is the strongest U.S. bank, according to Markets, clocking in at 13th worldwide.)

P&Ls: For those who have already gotten over the disturbing story linking the influx of casino cash to dead horses at New York State racetracks, the Journal figured out which Kentucky Derby entrants have been the best investments.

Somebody Screamed: Sotheby's sold Edvard Munch’s The Scream for a record $119.9 million last night, smashing the mark for art-at-auction, set at Christie's in 2010. Gallerist has the action.

If you're into that kind of thing: The blogger who brought you the Anonymous Finance Guy Who Pays for Sex is back, this time with the Anonymous Wall Street Escort Who Wants to Tell Clients They’re Bad in Bed.

[Photo by Hunter Martin/Getty Images]