NEW YORK – Now it’s personal: Hundreds of anti-Wall Street protesters held a “Millionaires March” on Tuesday past the homes of some of the wealthiest executives in America, stopping to jeer “Tax the rich!” and “Where’s my bailout?”

Walking two-by-two on the sidewalk because they had no march permit and didn’t want to be charged with blocking traffic, members of the Occupy Wall Street movement and other groups made their way up Manhattan’s East Side, along streets like Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue where some of the richest 1 percent of the population live in townhouses and luxury apartments.

They paused outside buildings where media mogul Rupert Murdoch, banker Jamie Dimon and oil tycoon David Koch have homes, and decried the impending expiration of New York’s 2 percent “millionaires’ tax” in December.

“I have nothing against these people personally. I just think they should pay their fair share of taxes,” said Michael Pollack, an office worker in a law firm. He held up a sign with a saying attributed to department store founder Edward Filene, “Why shouldn’t the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them.”

Pollack said: “It’s time for a new New Deal.”

For the past 3 1/2 weeks, protesters have besieged a park in lower Manhattan near Wall Street, denouncing corporate greed and the gap between rich and poor. The uptown march marked the first time the Occupy Wall Street movement has identified specific people as being part of the 1 percent the demonstrators say are getting rich at the expense of the rest of America.

When the march reached Park Avenue and East 93rd Street, protesters stopped in front of a building where they said Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chairman and CEO, has an apartment. Marchers screamed, “Where’s our bailout?” and “How do we end this deficit? End the war, tax the rich!”

JPMorgan was among the banks that received a federal bailout, money it has since repaid.

Dimon got supportive words Monday from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is himself a billionaire executive but whose East Side townhouse was not on the protesters’ list of targets.

Dimon has “brought more business to this city than maybe any other banker in (the) modern day,” the mayor said. “To go and picket him, I don’t know what that achieves. Jamie Dimon’s an honorable person working very hard. He pays his taxes.”

On Wednesday, Dimon was to be the focus of another protest, with demonstrators gathering at the New York City headquarters of JP Morgan Chase to again focus on the expiring tax.

Marcher Bahran Admadi, a former taxi driver and art dealer who is now unemployed, said he has “nothing personal” against the rich. “But some of them take people’s blood,” he said. “Everything goes up the ladder while we work harder and harder.”

Outside one building, protesters placed a giant replica of a check against the door. It was made out to “The top one percent” for $5 billion — the size of the impending state tax cut for New Yorkers making $250,000 and more.

There were no immediate reports of any arrests.

The Occupy Wall Street protests in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park have spread to other cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle and Los Angeles, and have become a political issue, with Republicans accusing the demonstrators of waging “class war” and President Barack Obama saying he understands their frustrations.

In Washington, six people were arrested Tuesday for demonstrating inside a Senate office building. More than 125 protesters in Boston were arrested overnight after they ignored warnings to move from a downtown green space, police said. A conservation group had recently planted $150,000 worth of shrubs, and officials said they were worried about damage.

The protest in New York City came as the state comptroller issued a report showing that Wall Street is again losing jobs because of global economic woes. The job losses threaten tax revenue for a city and state heavily reliant on the financial industry.

The industry shed 4,100 jobs in the late spring and summer and could lose nearly 10,000 more by the end of 2012, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said. That would bring the total industry loss to 32,000 positions since the financial meltdown of 2008.

The sector employed 166,600 people in investment banks, securities trading firms and hedge funds as of August.

Christopher Guerra, an artist and Occupy Wall Street protester from Newark, N.J., said the job losses aren’t necessarily bad.

“That means more people on our side,” Guerra said. “The companies are destroying this country by helping themselves, not the people, and pushing jobs out of America. If they get shafted, they will realize that what we are saying is true.”

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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Laura Crimaldi in Boston, and Kiley Armstrong, Colleen Long in New York.

NEW YORK – Hundreds of protesters, emboldened by the growing national outcry against what they see as the greed of Wall Street, streamed past the homes of some of the country’s richest residents Tuesday in a “Millionaires March.”

Members of the Occupy Wall Street movement and other groups walked up the sidewalks of Manhattan’s East Side, along world-famous streets like Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue that are lined with swank apartment towers.

They paused outside buildings where they said media mogul Rupert Murdoch, banker Jamie Dimon and oil tycoon David Koch had homes and expressed concern about how much less the wealthy will pay — and who would be harmed because of those lowered tax revenues — when New York’s 2 percent “millionaires’ tax” expires in December.

“I have nothing against these people personally; I just think they should pay their fair share of taxes,” said Michael Pollack, 52, an office worker in a law firm.

He held up a sign with a saying attributed to department store founder Edward Filene: “Why shouldn’t the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them.”

“It’s time for a new New Deal,” Pollack said.

The march was the first in the weeks since the protest began that identified specific people as being part of the 1 percent of the wealthiest Americans the demonstrators say are enriching themselves at the expense of others, through the influence of corporations and corporate culture on American society.

At one point, protesters stopped in front of a building where they said Dimon, JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO, has an apartment.

“Where’s our bailout?” they screamed. “How do we end this deficit? End the war, tax the rich!”

JPMorgan was among the banks that received federal bailout funds, and has since paid them back.

Dimon got supportive words Monday from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who said, “He’s brought more business to this city than maybe any other banker in (the) modern day. … To go and picket him, I don’t know what that achieves. Jamie Dimon’s an honorable person working very hard. He pays his taxes.”

Marcher Bahran Admadi, a former taxi driver and art dealer who is now unemployed, said it wasn’t a personal attack against the rich.

“I have nothing personal against them; as human beings we are all the same, but some of them take people’s blood,” he said. “Everything goes up the ladder while we work harder and harder.”

Protesters have been camped out for weeks in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, near Wall Street, saying they’re fighting for the “99 percent,” or the vast majority of Americans who do not fall into the wealthiest 1 percent of the population.

Their causes range from bringing down Wall Street to fighting global warming. The movement gained traction through social media, and protests have taken place in several other cities nationwide.

In Boston, hundreds of college students marched through downtown Boston on Monday and gathered on Boston Common, holding signs that read “Fund education, not corporations.”

The protesters are angry with an education system they say mimics “irresponsible, unaccountable, and unethical financial practices” of Wall Street.

More than 120 protesters in Boston were arrested overnight after they ignored warnings to move from a downtown greenway near where they have been camped out for more than a week, police said.

Several hundred protesters were arrested in New York more than a week ago after police said they ignored warnings not to block traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. There was no immediate word on any arrests Tuesday.

The protest comes as New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released a report showing that Wall Street is again losing jobs because of global economic woes, threatening tax revenue for a city and state heavily reliant on the financial industry.

“Excessive risk-taking on Wall Street was a major factor leading to the financial crisis and the recession,” DiNapoli said. “Regulatory changes that reduce risk and focus attention on long-term profitability rather than short-term gains will enhance stability.”

Christopher Guerra, a 27-year-old artist and Occupy Wall Street protester from Newark, N.J., said he thought the job losses weren’t necessarily bad.

“That means more people on our side,” said Guerra, who calls himself an Eisenhower Republican but says he’s opposed to today’s corporate behavior. “The companies are destroying this country by helping themselves, not the people, and pushing jobs out of America.

“If they get shafted, they will realize that what we are saying is true.”

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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Laura Crimaldi in Boston, and Kiley Armstrong, Deepti Hajela, Colleen Long in New York.

WASHINGTON – The former chief financial officer of a major U.S. home builder accused of committing accounting fraud five years ago is giving back roughly $1.4 million in bonuses and stock profits.

James O’Leary, the former CFO of Beazer Homes USA Inc., agreed to return the money to the company in a deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday. He admitted no wrongdoing.

O’Leary wasn’t charged in connection with the accounting violations. But an anti-fraud law enacted in 2002 requires senior executives to repay bonuses, other incentive pay and stock profits received during a period in which their company violated financial reporting rules. The SEC is empowered to recoup the money for the company.

In March, Beazer’s then-CEO Ian McCarthy agreed to give back about $6.5 million.

Beazer Homes USA Inc., based in Atlanta, is one of the largest U.S. home builders. It settled civil accounting-fraud charges with the SEC in September 2008. Federal prosecutors filed criminal fraud conspiracy charges against the company in July 2009. In a deferred prosecution agreement, Beazer accepted responsibility for fraudulent mortgage-making and accounting practices, and agreed to pay up to $50 million in restitution.

The SEC accused Beazer of inflating profits five years ago by falsely recording home-financing transactions and manipulating other results.

Beazer got out of the mortgage business in February 2008.

The SEC filed a civil lawsuit Tuesday against O’Leary in federal court in Atlanta. O’Leary is repaying about $1 million he received in cash bonuses and approximately $400,000 from stock sales.

O’Leary, who is a certified public accountant, was Beazer’s chief financial officer from August 2003 to March 2007. His attorney did not immediately return calls Tuesday.

BEIJING (Reuters) – China may need to replace more than half of its housing stock in the next 20 years, a researcher at the housing ministry said in remarks published on Friday.

Most flats built between the 1970s and 1990s are cramped and uncomfortable, falling well short of today’s standards, Chen Huai, who heads the ministry’s policy research office, was quoted as saying by the Southern Metropolis Daily.

The trend for households to upgrade to more modern flats, along with urbanization, is a fundamental driver of demand for property in China.

“Homes that were built from 1979 to 1999 can last only for another 10 to 15 years because their original design no longer meets the demands of people living in a fast-developing city,” Chen said.

(Reporting by Aileen Wang and Alan Wheatley; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

LONDON (AFP) – Leading shares rose in London on Monday in line with Wall Street where investors welcomed a rise in US new-home sales and as banks found some support in the results of European stress tests.

The FTSE 100 index climbed 0.72 percent to close at 5,351.12 points.

Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) was the most traded stock, seeing 165 million shares switch owners, followed by Vodafone which saw 81.4 million units change hands.

British publisher Pearson was the top blue-chip performer, adding 5.76 percent — or 56 pence — to end at 1,029, followed by exploration company Tullow Oil, which rose 5.09 percent — or 60 pence — to end at 1,239.

African Barrick Gold was the biggest faller, shedding 4.18 percent — or 24 pence — of its value to end at 550, followed by fellow miner Fresnillo, which closed down 2.57 percent — or 28 pence — at 1,063.

Meanwhile, the pound was trading at 1.5493 dollars at 17:20 BST while sterling stood at 1.1922 euros at the same time.