PROGRAM HELPS SEND VETS TO WALL STREET

Friday, December 5, may not have been the best day to launch an employment program in finance -- even one with the great intention of providing job training for wounded veterans.  After all, Friday was the day the U.S. Labor Department announced the loss of more than half a million jobs in November, including 32,000 from the financial services sector.

Still, that didn't stop retired Marine General Peter Pace, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from showing up to launch Operation Wall Street at the Armory in Center City, the headquarters of the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry. 

It also did not stop John Jones, a wounded Marine from Colorado, from enlisting in the program. When he graduates, he hopes to work as a licensed broker on Wall Street.  "It's a cyclical fact," Jones said. "We have our ups and downs. The economy is going to do a big circle, but we are the safest place in the world to invest and to save. And it's going to keep coming around. It'll get better shortly."

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