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U.S. stocks ended flat Tuesday, after turning sharply lower during the final hour of trading amid fears that Greece will leave the eurozone.

About an hour before the closing bell, reports surfaced that former Greek prime minister Lucas Papademos told Dow Jones Newswires that Greece is considering making preparations to leave the eurozone.

The euro sank on the news, falling more than 1% against the dollar, and pulled stocks down with it.

Earlier, strong U.S. housing data boosted stocks.

"Investors were able to concentrate on what was happening in the U.S., said Kim Forrest, senior equity analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group. "But I guess Greece came back with a vengeance."

Greece: Top 3 risks facing U.S.

After being up almost 1% earlier in the day, the S&P 500 () sank as much as 0.5%. The broad index managed to recover by the closing bell, finishing the day up less than 1 point, or 0.1%.

The Dow Jones industrial average () and Nasdaq () also tumbled following the Greek news. Both indexes bounced back from their lowest levels of the day but still finished in the red. The Dow slipped 2 points for the day, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 8 points, or 0.3%.

Investors will continue to focus on developments out of Europe.

The region’s leaders are due to meet Wednesday in an ad hoc summit to address the latest problems with European sovereign debt, worries that Greece is moving closer to leaving the eurozone, and the contagion effects an exit might have on other economies.

U.S. stocks bounced back from their worst week of the year Monday, on renewed optimism that European leaders would find a way out of the sovereign debt crisis.

Economy: Following the opening bell, the National Association of Realtors said that existing home sales rose 3.4% in April to an annual rate of 4.62 million, up 10% year-over-year. Home affordability also came in at record levels.

"These sales levels are still relatively low, but a home is a big ticket item, and to see improvement in the housing market is always good," said Forrest. "It shows that buyers think their prospects are solid enough to agree to a mortgage."

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development cut its forecasts for the eurozone economy to a decline of 0.1% this year, and warned that sovereign debt problems pose a risk to the global economic recovery.

World markets: A report showing ebbing inflation in the United Kingdom raised hopes that lower price pressures might allow leaders to move toward more stimulus to respond to economic weakness.

European stocks ended higher. Britain’s FTSE 100 () rose 1.9%, while the DAX () in Germany gained 1.7% and France’s CAC 40 () jumped 2.2%.

Fitch downgraded Japan, the world’s No. 3 economy, and suggested further downgrades could be coming.

Asian markets ended before the Japan downgrade was announced. The Shanghai Composite () rose 1.0%, the Hang Seng () in Hong Kong gained 0.6% and Japan’s Nikkei () climbed 1.1%.

Companies: Bank stocks were among the biggest gainers Tuesday, with shares of JPMorgan Chase (, Fortune 500) rising almost 5%. Bank of America (, Fortune 500) and Citigroup (, Fortune 500) rose more than 2%, while Morgan Stanley (, Fortune 500) and Goldman Sachs (, Fortune 500) added about 1%.

Best Buy (, Fortune 500), which has been hit by a scandal that cost the CEO his job, along with store closings during the most recent quarter, reported solid earnings even as same-store sales fell 5.3%. The retailer also reaffirmed its earnings guidance of $3.50 to $3.80 a share, excluding restructuring charges. Analysts are only looking for earnings of $3.58 a share this year.

AutoZone (, Fortune 500) also reported better than expected earnings of $6.28 a share, but weaker than expected revenue sent its shares lower.

Williams Sonoma () reported earnings per share of 34 cents excluding special items, which came in better than forecasts and year-earlier results. The retailer raised its earnings guidance for 2012.

Shares of Urban Outfitters () popped after the retailer topped earnings expectations.

Polo Ralph Lauren’s (, Fortune 500) stock also edged up after the company’s profit rose 29% on strong revenue and same-store sales growth. The company also doubled its quarterly dividend. But the company’s revenue guidance for fiscal 2013 came in below expectations.

Shares of Dell (, Fortune 500) tumbled in after-hours trading Tuesday after the computer maker posted a profit that was below Wall Street’s expectations, and also issued a disappointing forecast for the second quarter, amid weak PC sales.

Currencies and commodities: The euro sank on the Greek news, falling more than 1% against the dollar. Earlier it was only off between 0.5% and 0.7%.

Oil for July delivery fell $1.38 to settle at $91.48 a barrel.

Gold futures for June delivery fell $22.10 to settle at $1,566.60 an ounce.

Bonds: The price on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury slid, pushing the yield up to 1.79% from 1.74% late Monday.  

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After four months of paperwork, hype and speculation, the last piece of the Facebook IPO is in place: Facebook said it has priced its IPO at $38 a share.

At that price, Facebook’s IPO will raise $16 billion, making it the largest tech IPO in history. It’s the third largest U.S. IPO ever, trailing only the $19.7 billion raised by Visa (, Fortune 500) in March 2008 and the $18.1 billion raised by automaker General Motors (, Fortune 500) in November 2010, according to rankings by Thomson Reuters.

There are still a few more steps before Facebook’s shares are ready to trade. The company is waiting for the Securities and Exchange Commission to declare its IPO effective — the formal green light Facebook and its underwriters need before they can sell shares to outside buyers.

The $38 IPO price is the rate at which Facebook’s underwriters (including lead banker Morgan Stanley) will sell shares to their clients, which typically include large institutional investors, mutual funds and hedge funds.

Shares will be released Thursday night to those buyers, who can resell them on the open market beginning on Friday.

Some shares were made available to individual investors, but getting them typically requires either a lot of money or a lot of trading experience. It also required moving fast. Many brokerages offering pieces of Facebook’s IPO allotment "closed their books" on Tuesday, meaning they stopped taking orders.

When can I buy? Ordinary investors looking to get a piece of Facebook will have to wait until Friday morning.

Live blog: CNNMoney tries to buy Facebook shares

Unlike Google (, Fortune 500), whose IPO used a "Dutch auction" to allow direct bidding by investors, Facebook’s setup doesn’t give regular folks access until shares begin trading publicly on the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange.

While the market opens at 9:30 am ET on Friday, Facebook’s shares won’t start trading instantly. It typically takes time — sometimes an hour or more — for newly listed shares to begin actively trading on the day of their public debut.

How much Facebook is worth: Facebook’s () market capitalization will hover around $81 billion on the day of its IPO.

Many Facebook employees and executives hold unexercised stock options. If all of those shares were exercised, Facebook’s outstanding share count would rise to around 2.8 billion — pushing the company’s total valuation closer to $107 billion.

Who’s selling shares: Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg plans to sell 30.2 million shares in the IPO offering. That will net Zuckerberg about $1.1 billion.

But Zuckerberg won’t be hanging on to his cash. Facebook said he will use the "substantial majority" of the windfall to cover the massive tax bill he’ll be hit with, thanks to his plan to exercise a large stock-options grant that will increase his ownership stake in the company he founded.

After the offering, Zuckerberg will hold 503.6 million shares, or about 31% of the company. That stake is worth $19.1 billion.

Venture capital firm Accel Partners, which is the largest shareholder outside of Zuckerberg, is selling 49 million shares in the offering. That’s about a quarter of its Facebook holdings.

– CNNMoney’s Chris Isidore and Maureen Farrell contributed reporting. 

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The team at Payday Loan Company is ready to tell anyone yes for a payday loans or cash advance for up to $1000 cash.

The percentage of borrowers who have dropped behind on their mortgage payments fell to a four-year low in the first three months of 2012, a bankers’ group said Wednesday.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said Wednesday that the percentage of loans delinquent or already in the foreclosure process during the first quarter was 11.33%, the lowest level since 2008. That was a decrease of 1.2 percentage points from a quarter earlier and 0.98 percentage point below the rate 12 months earlier.

"Delinquencies are clearly continuing to improve," said Michael Fratantoni, the MBA’s vice president for research and economics.

Another hopeful sign is the falling percentage of borrowers who are just getting into trouble, ones who have missed one payment. That’s useful for predicting the more seriously delinquencies to come.

"Newer delinquencies, loans one payment past due as of March 31, are down to the lowest level since the middle of 2007, indicating fewer new problems we will need to deal with in the future," said Fratantoni.

These new delinquencies represented 3.1% of loans outstanding, according to Jay Brinkmann, the MBA’s chief economist. That matches the long-term historical average of 3.1% going back to the 1990s, he said.

"Basically, we’re back to normal on that count," he said.

One factor that has slowed the healing is the continued difficulty lenders face moving foreclosures through the pipeline, especially in states that involve the courts in the foreclosure process guaranteed online payday loans.

In the so-called judicial states, 6.9% of loans are in foreclosure inventory, loans that the banks have begun the legal process of foreclosing on but have not yet taken control of the property through a foreclosure sale.

In non-judicial states, where foreclosures are handled by trustees such as title companies, only 2.9% of loans are in foreclosure inventory.

The difference is mostly the speed that banks can move defaults through the system, said Brinkmann.

Bank of America offering up to $30,000 for short sales

One way banks have started to reduce foreclosures is that they are now encouraging short sales, the deals in which borrowers sell their homes for less than what the owe, leaving the banks to absorb the losses.

That can also move delinquent borrowers out of the homes more quickly.

Banks also know that short sales are less costly to them than foreclosures, in which expenses such as property taxes, insurance and maintenance can mount up. In addition, homes repossessed in foreclosures often come to the bank in poor condition, and they command lower prices, on average, than short sales.

The mortgage lenders now often pay large incentives to borrowers willing to cooperate in getting short sales done. For instance, Bank of America is offering some struggling homeowners payments of up to $30,000 if they sell their homes in a short sale and avoid ending up in foreclosure.  

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U.S. consumers barely increased their spending on retail goods in April. The weak gain was affected by cheaper gas prices and possibly a mild winter, which may have encouraged consumers to make purchases in the previous two months.

The Commerce Department says retail sales rose 0.1 percent April. Retail spending had risen 0.7 percent in March and 1 percent in February.

Some of the drop was the result of lower gas prices business cards design. But excluding gasoline station sales, retail sales rose just 0.2 percent. That means consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of economic activity, got off to a sluggish start for the April-June quarter.

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is a surprise.

Originally conceived as a photo-sharing site, the year-old company became a Silicon Valley punchline after its disasterously overhyped launch. Major investors like Sequoia Capital and Bain Capital flung $41 million at the startup, only to see it implode within days of going live. Color’s top product executives quickly headed out the door.

Nguyen shrugged and pivoted. He’s got plenty of cash in the bank to experiment with, and no shortage of ideas guaranteed personal loan approval. The video market is exactly the kind of wide-open fiend that Nguyen, a serial entrepreneur who sold his last venture to Apple (, Fortune 500), loves to play in.

"We want to give people a glimpse of the future and deliver it as fast as possible," he says. 

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Chesapeake Energy Corp. has received a $3 billion loan from Goldman Sachs and Jefferies Group, giving the company more time to sell assets and lower its debt.

Chesapeake has been aggressively selling oil and gas assets, but its stock tumbled Friday after the company suggested that some of its planned sales could be delayed. Investors, who worried about a cash crunch if any sales were delayed or halted, sent Chesapeake’s stock down 13.8 percent to close at $14.81 on Friday.

But the Oklahoma City company’s shares climbed 3.7 percent to $15.35 in after-hours trading on news of the unsecured loan.

“This short-term loan from Goldman and Jefferies provides us with significant additional financial flexibility as we execute our asset sales during the remainder of 2012,” Chairman and CEO Aubrey McClendon said in a statement.

Chesapeake said late Friday that it plans to complete $9 billion to $11.5 billion in asset sales during the remainder of 2012 and will use part of the proceeds from those sales to pay back the loan. The company previously outlined plans to sell as much as $14 billion of assets this year.

Chesapeake anticipates closing on the sale of its Permian Basin property in Texas and its Mississippi Lime joint venture during the third quarter, saying it has received strong interest for both assets from potential buyers.

Chesapeake also said that it will use the loan’s net proceeds to repay borrowings under an existing revolving credit facility. The new facility expires on Dec. 2, 2017.

Shares of the company had drifted lower earlier on Friday after a published report said the company didn’t tell investors about $1.4 billion in liabilities.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Chesapeake has raised $6.4 billion since 2007 by signing oil and gas production deals with a number of banks. Those deals are essentially debts that Chesapeake must repay with oil and natural gas. The Journal said the full cost of meeting those obligations over the next 10 years wasn’t disclosed.

Chesapeake spokesman Michael Kehs disagreed. He said a portion of those liabilities were included in a May 1 regulatory filing as part of its operating costs for 2012. Kehs said the rest of the $1.4 billion is reflected in an estimate of future net revenue from Chesapeake’s oil and natural gas reserves, which the company put at $48 billion in a Feb. 29 regulatory filing.

A series of negative headlines have called Chesapeake’s leadership and oversight into question recently. During the past few weeks, news reports revealed that McClendon took out personal loans from a company while that company was planning to buy Chesapeake assets. Reuters also reported that McClendon ran a private hedge fund that made bets on the price of oil and natural gas _ commodities that Chesapeake produces.

Chesapeake has stripped McClendon of his board chairmanship. It’s also ending a program that allows McClendon to make personal investments in the company’s wells. On Friday, Chesapeake said McClendon received $108.6 million from January to April from sales of company well assets.

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Macy’s Inc. reported a 38 percent increase in its first-quarter profit as the department store chain continues to reap benefits from its move to tailor its fashions to local markets.

The earnings beat Wall Street’s expectations. But its shares fell more than 4 percent in morning trading Wednesday as Macy’s failed to make a conforming boost in its earnings guidance for the year.

That spooked investors who are worried that consumer spending is slowing amid a choppy recovery.

Macy’s, which also operates the upscale Bloomingdale’s chain, said that its net income rose to $181 million, or 43 cents per share, for the three-month period ended April 28. That’s up from $131 million, or 30 cents per share, a year ago.

Revenue rose 4.3 percent to $6.14 billion from $5.89 billion a year ago.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected earnings of 40 cents per share on revenue of $6.14 billion.

“The momentum in our business at Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s continued to build in the first quarter, with sales and earnings exceeding our expectations going into the year,” Terry J. Lundgren, Macy’s chairman, president and CEO, said in a statement. “The quarterly data clearly demonstrates the strength of our results as we continue to implement our strategies.”

Macy’s is the first in a series of major retailers reporting first-quarter results that should offer clues into consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of U.S. economic activity. Analysts will be carefully studying the reports because the economy is at a critical juncture.

A flurry of economic data has sparked worries over a spring slowdown for the third year in a row. Companies have slowed their hiring in March and April. The stock market has lost momentum as the European debt crisis accelerates. And housing remains weak. April’s sales reports from retailers, including from Macy’s, also showed a pullback from shoppers but warm weather and an early Easter helped to pull sales forward. Analysts believe that May results will offer more clarity on the consumers’ mindset.

Macy’s has been able to deftly navigate its way through the recession and a slow recovery by embracing its own initiatives. The chain has benefited from the strategy Lundgren conceived to tailor merchandise to local markets as consumer spending slowed down in 2007. A better trained sales force also helped. The company has also locked in exclusive brands including its Material Girl fashion collection, created by pop star Madonna and her daughter Lourdes, and Tommy Hilfiger sportswear.

Macy’s revenue at stores open at least a year climbed 4.4 percent for the quarter, though it had a weak finish to the period. The measure was up 1.2 percent for April. Rival Kohl’s posted a meager 0.2 percent increase for the quarter. J.C. Penney is expected to post a decline for that measure as it is in the midst of overhauling a new pricing strategy, launched Feb. 1. With the pricing strategy, Penney got rid of hundreds of sale events and instead is focusing on everyday prices and deeper promotions that last an entire month.

Investors were hoping that Macy’s would benefit from rival Penney’s period of transition since the new pricing will take time to resonate with shoppers, who are used to racks of discounts. Penney’s pricing strategy is part of an overall transformation spearheaded by its new CEO Ron Johnson.

Still, Macy’s only slightly increased its annual guidance for revenue at stores open at least a year. It now expects that figure to be up 3.7 percent, compared with its earlier guidance of 3.5 percent.

Macy’s reaffirmed its earnings guidance for the year of $3.25 to $3.30 per share. Analysts had expected $3.39 per share, according to FactSet.

Macy’s shares fell $1.60, or 4.1 percent, to $37.91 in morning trading. They peaked for the past year at $42.17 a week ago. They traded as low as $22.66 in mid-August.

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Oil is now below $100 per barrel following a disappointing U.S. jobs report and warnings of a weakening world economy.

It’s the first time oil has dropped below $100 since February 13. Benchmark crude hit $99.99 in morning trading.

Prices are falling as Western nations plan talks with Iran over its nuclear program, easing fears of a protracted standoff in the Middle East.

Economists are also increasingly focused on weakening oil demand. American oil consumption has dropped 5.3 percent in the first quarter. World oil supplies are also growing.

Oil has crossed the $100 mark 21 times during the past year. It rose as high as $113.93 per barrel last April and fell as low as $75.67 per barrel on Oct. 4.

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Denmark’s finance minister says she and her European Union counterparts are close to a deal to force banks to build up bigger capital cushions against financial shocks.

Early Thursday, after more than 15 hours of debate, Margrethe Vestager said only a few “technical issues” needed to be ironed out before the ministers’ next meeting in two weeks.

The EU is in the process of writing an international agreement on capital defenses for banks into European law that regulators hope will prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis.

The so-called Basel III deal would force lenders to increase their highest-quality capital gradually from 2 percent of the risky assets they hold to 7 percent by 2019. An additional 2.5 percent would have to be built up during good times.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

BRUSSELS (AP) _ European finance ministers were divided Wednesday on how the region’s banks can protect themselves from future financial shocks.

The European Union is in the process to writing an international agreement on capital defences for banks into European law. This would determine the level of risk Europe’s banks can take and what regulators can do to ensure that financial crises like the one brought on by the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008 do not happen again.

The so-called Basel III deal would force banks gradually to increase their highest-quality capital _ such as equity and reserves _ from 2 percent of the risky assets they hold to 7 percent by 2019. An additional 2.5 percent would have to be built up during good times.

But several countries, including the U.K. and Sweden, want to require their banks to build up even higher defenses without having to go to the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm in Brussels, for approval. There was also some disagreement over what should count as capital. Some countries are warning that Europe could be seen as softening banking rules at a time when it is already under close scrutiny from international investors.

“If we duck the challenge of implementing Basel we could face very important challenges to confidence in Europe this year,” warned George Osborne, the U.K.’s Treasury chief.

Basel III was agreed by the world’s leading economies after the 2008 financial crisis demonstrated that many banks did not have enough of a capital cushion to absorb sudden losses on loans and other risky activities. Once agreed, the new rules would apply to more than 8,300 banks in Europe, forcing them to build up billions in extra capital by selling shares or assets or reining in bonuses and dividends.

The 2008 financial panic that followed Lehman’s collapse hit Europe hard. Between 2008 and 2010, governments across the 27-country-bloc spent (EURO)4.6 trillion ($6.1 trillion) propping up struggling banks instant credit report.

What complicated efforts even more was that the open borders in the EU allow banks to operate freely across the bloc, but when lenders ran into trouble it was national governments _ and taxpayers _ who had to foot the bill. While the EU is now striving for a single set of banking rules, there is still no pan-European bank resolution fund that could relieve national governments.

The U.K., which had to save three major banks, has seen its debt load almost double since 2007. Meanwhile much smaller Ireland had to seek an international bailout to help stem the losses of its domestic lenders. And many economists fear that the economic recession in Spain may soon reveal massive bank losses there.

Now, the U.K. is leading a group of countries that want to be able to force their own banks to have bigger defenses than the ones prescribed by the pan-European rules without first getting approval from Brussels.

“We should make it clear that the crisis did not originate exclusively from weak fiscal policy. It originated also from insufficiently strong banks,” said Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski. “So therefore a group of countries including Poland, the Czech Republic, Sweden and the United Kingdom are very determined to see that banking systems in the future should be as healthy as we expect the fiscal side, the budgetary side, to be kept.”

That demand is opposed by France and the Commission, which fear that jacking up capital requirements in one country could force banks based there to cut down lending by their foreign subsidiaries. That, they argue, could hurt small states that don’t have a big domestic banking system.

To bridge the divide between the two camps, Denmark, which currently holds the EU presidency, has proposed a compromise that would allow national regulators to require an extra capital buffer of 3 percent. Anything beyond that would have to be approved by the Commission in Brussels, which would examine not only the level of risk in the home state but also the potential impact in neighboring countries.

After several hours of public discussion, finance ministers retreated into bilateral talks. A possible compromise could include requiring not the Commission, but another European supervisor _ the European Systemic Risk Board, which is led by the European Central Bank President Mario Draghi _ to approve higher national buffers.

If they cannot find agreement Wednesday, several ministers said they hoped a deal could be struck at their next meeting in two weeks. Once finance ministers have struck a deal, they have to negotiate a final agreement with the European Parliament.

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Don Melvin contributed to this story.

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News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch is unfit to lead his global media empire, an influential group of British lawmakers said Tuesday.

In a scathing report, the lawmakers said his company misled Parliament about the scale of phone hacking at one of its tabloids.

Parliament’s cross-party Culture, Media and Sport committee said News International, the British newspaper division of Murdoch’s News Corp., had deliberately ignored evidence of malpractice, covered up evidence and frustrated efforts to expose wrongdoing.

Murdoch has insisted he was unaware that hacking was widespread at his now-shuttered News of the World tabloid, blaming underlings for keeping him in the dark.

The legislators said if that was true, “he turned a blind eye and exhibited willful blindness to what was going on in his companies.”

“We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company,” the report by the panel of 11 lawmakers said.

Labour Party panel member Tom Watson said the decision had not been unanimous, and Conservative lawmakers Louise Mensch _ who opposed condemning Murdoch _ said the split had been along party lines Same day payday loans.

The judgment on Murdoch implies that News Corp., which he heads, is also not a fit to control British Sky Broadcasting, in which News Corp. holds a controlling stake of 39 percent.

The committee agreed unanimously that three key News International executives misled Parliament by offering false accounts of their knowledge of the extent of phone hacking at the News of The World _ a rare and serious censure which usually demands a personal apology to legislators.

Murdoch closed down the 168-year-old Sunday tabloid last July amid public revulsion at the hacking of voice mail messages of celebrities and victims of crime, including murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

Throughout the scandal, News International’s approach “was to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing,” the legislators wrote.

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