OPEC cuts 2M barrels; Morgan Stanley, Goldman post losses

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those low gas prices may be bottoming out oil-rich countries are cutting production by 2 million barrels a day opec's biggest one-time cutback is designed to lower Supply and stop the sliding price of oil which is down 70 percent from the summer today the price that the pump ticked up half a penny wall Street's excitement over the federal reserve's big interest rate cut wore off today with another dose of recession reality banking giant Morgan Stanley says it lost well over two billion dollars in the fourth quarter investment Powerhouse Goldman Sachs lost a similar amount Morgan and Goldman are the only independent firms standing after the year's Investment Banking collapse taking a look at how stocks finished the session the Dow Jones Industrial Average down nearly a hundred points the NASDAQ Composite gave back about 11. the next president may need to spend another one trillion dollars to help the ailing economy that's what economists are telling advisors to Barack Obama Obama's team is Consulting with experts in they assemble a recovery package at the New York Stock Exchange I'm Alexis christopherus

SEC Dropped Ball On Madoff

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As accused swindler Bernard Maidoff shoved his way through a pack of photographers today. The nation's top securities regulator made a shocking admission that government auditors had repeatedly failed to thoroughly investigate allegations that maid off was running a scam. Credible allegations about Mr. Maid off had been made over nearly a decade and yet never referred to the commission for action. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox says Maidoff kept several sets of books and lied to regulators to cover up an elaborate Ponzi scheme. But Cox claims there's no evidence of any deliberate wrongdoing at the SEC. It is an outrageous failure. Former SEC lawyer Jacob Franle though says government investigators blew it is that when they did go in to the maid off operation and Bernie Maidoff would say look at this and look at this and the SEC would say thank you and not pursue it. Now, the SEC is pursuing an investigation into what went wrong. One area of interest involves former inspector Eric Swanson, who at one point led a team looking into Maid Off's financing. Swanson left the SEC in 2006 and is now married to Maid Off's niece, a top lawyer for Maid Off's firm. Swanson says he did nothing wrong and promises to cooperate. Maid Off, who made a personal fortune, has multiple homes, country club memberships, and a yacht. Now he wears an electronic tracking bracelet on his ankle and is under nighttime house arrest. Maid off told the FBI his clients lost up to $50 billion dollar, but no one has a firm grasp on the real scope of the damage or how many investors lost their life savings. I'm broke. Larry Leaf is one of them. He's out $8 million and now blames the government for not finding the fraud. I've saved my money. I planned for my retirement. I did everything right and I paid all my taxes and now the government has allowed this to happen. Late today, CBS News learned that President-elect Obama will name Mary Shapiro tomorrow as the new SEC chairman. Shapiro has a long background in financial regulation. We should say that chairman Cox previously said that he all along intended to leave at the end of the Bush administration. Katie Bob or reporting from Washington tonight.