By Matthew Goldstein and Jonathan Stempel

Fourteen people were charged with fraud and conspiracy in a dramatic widening of an insider trading scandal that has ensnared hedge fund managers, top Silicon Valley executives and a bevy of white-shoe advisers.

As CEO and primary shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK), Warren Buffett, the world's most famous investor, has developed a well-known reputation of buying big stakes in companies he believes in. When Buffett buys shares of a company for BRK, the markets translate his moves as a vote of confidence for a firm's continued success. Although Berkshire Hathaway's holdings change, the company's most recent SEC filings* reveal where the Oracle of Omaha is most heavily invested. Here are the 15 publicly traded stocks, by value, that are the biggest holdings of Berkshire Hathaway.

Moody's Corp. on Thursday said its board declared a quarterly dividend of 10 cents per share.

A strong corporate-bond market helped prop up Moody's Corp. third-quarter profit, and led the company to raise its outlook for the rest of the year.

What follows is a roundup of corporate earnings reports for Thursday, Oct. 29.

The U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee on Wednesday approved legislation to toughen regulation of credit rating agencies.

Credit-rating agencies would be more tightly regulated under legislation approved on Wednesday by the House Financial Services Committee.

The United States, which posted a record deficit in the last fiscal year, may lose its Aaa-rating if it does not reduce the gap to manageable levels in the next 3-4 years, Moody's Investors Service said on Thursday.

Reform of rating agencies is badly needed as there is a culture of carelessness towards the law which needs challenging, Eric Kolchinsky, a former analyst at Moody's who has accused the agency of issuing inflated ratings, told CNBC Friday.

From the entire S&P 500, which stocks are analysts expecting to have the biggest pops? With data from ThomsonReuters, we took a look at which stocks have consensus estimates farthest above their stock prices (as of market close on 9/30/09).

Ratings agencies need to adopt universal standards to prevent the kinds of abuses that helped fuel the collapse of the credit markets, an industry whistleblower told CNBC.

The Securities and Exchange Commission spends a lot of time and money trying to discover insider trading in stocks. But when it comes to structured financial products — the funny securities that were at the heart of the financial crisis — it has just adopted a proposal that will facilitate such trading, says the NYT's Floyd Norris.

Out here in Germany the debate about bad banks is heating up. Is our model actually working? Is the shifting of toxic assets from banks’ balance sheets into as specially created bad banks, the right answer to stabilize the financial system?

Stocks declined Wednesday as weak demand for today's Treasury auction and a sharp drop in oil prices dragged on the market. A disappointing durable-goods report didn't help either.