http://www.cjr.org/ en Copyright 2009 Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:06:02 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Ryan Chittum http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/friday_links_a_contrite_banker.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/friday_links_a_contrite_banker.php The Audit Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:06:02 -0500 Ryan Chittum Dow Jones Newswires breaks an excellent story on Wells Fargo's efforts to delay its day of reckoning on billions and billions of more mortgage losses, these in ready-to-implode option-ARMs Wells inherited when it bought Wachovia, which inherited them when it bought Golden West, which pioneered the disastrous concept of the "Pick-A-Pay" mortgage. Now, Wells Fargo is giving... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/dow_jones_on_the_paperitover_e.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/dow_jones_on_the_paperitover_e.php The Audit Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:22:01 -0500 Ryan Chittum The Wall Street Journal follows up this morning on its report on CVS Caremark's business practices six months ago. The Federal Trade Commission is investigating the company's doings, which the Journal in May reported include blatantly anticompetitive stuff like raising co-pays for people who shop at non-CVS pharmacies. Caremark is a pharmacy-benefits manager that merged with CVS, the big... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/wsj_spotlight_helps_get_result.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/wsj_spotlight_helps_get_result.php The Audit Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:45:30 -0500 Dean Starkman There is a journalistic school of thought emerging, I fear, that holds that because you went to the trouble of investigating something you publish, whether you find anything worthwhile or not. This comes to mind after reading a piece by ProPublica on supposed waste in government stimulus spending. Stimulus for Cotton Candy, Tango and a Fish Orchestra?... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/trivial_pursuit_at_pro_publica.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/trivial_pursuit_at_pro_publica.php The Audit Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:32:10 -0500 Ryan Chittum The Wall Street Journal reported a couple of days ago that Goldman Sachs (an Audit funder) is trying to buy tax credits from Fannie Mae to offset its profits. Take it from here, Floyd Norris: Goldman, you may recall, was saved with taxpayer money when the panic spread last year. A naïve person might think such a company... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/thursday_links_goldies_gall_ch.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/thursday_links_goldies_gall_ch.php The Audit Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:33:17 -0500 Dean Starkman We appreciate the bizpress’s newfound attention to Washington political fights over regulatory and economic policy, and we’re not afraid to say so. Before the crash, as we’ve also said, the Wall Street and Washington press corps might as well have existed on different planets, so little did one understand the other's beat. Apart from close, if narrow and... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/regulatory_reform.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/regulatory_reform.php The Audit Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:15:23 -0500 Ryan Chittum http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/bloomberg_examines_the_bank_lo.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/bloomberg_examines_the_bank_lo.php The Audit Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:25:08 -0500 Ryan Chittum http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/wednesday_links_ad_comps_recov.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/wednesday_links_ad_comps_recov.php The Audit Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:50:45 -0500 Ryan Chittum Dean Starkman has been applauding McClatchy's series on Goldman Sachs (an Audit funder) for a couple of days now. Add another Audit appreciation today. McClatchy has been doing what Dean has been calling for for a long time now: Looking much more closely at how Wall Street fueled the mortgage crisis and how it was deeply... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/mcclatchy_goldman_laid_down_wi.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/mcclatchy_goldman_laid_down_wi.php The Audit Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:10:11 -0500 Ryan Chittum Bloomberg notices that three prominent bankers in recent weeks have taken to UK churches to make the case that they're not evil. Really, they did that. The moneychangers/temple headlines write themselves (see above), but Bloomberg being Bloomberg, it goes with its house brand of quirkiness, which in this case works well: Profit `Not Satanic,’ Barclays Says, After Goldman... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/bloomberg_moneychangers_in_the.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/bloomberg_moneychangers_in_the.php The Audit Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:19:29 -0500 Dean Starkman A Journal story this morning reports that a White House claim that the stimulus bill saved or created 640,000 jobs is overstated. The number of jobs the Obama administration credits to federal stimulus money could be overstated by at least 20,000 of the 640,000 claimed, a Wall Street Journal analysis found. The story appears on A6, so there’s... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/wsjs_3_solution.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/wsjs_3_solution.php The Audit Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:17:16 -0500 Dean Starkman The Times has done a really nice job exploring dubious practices in the credit-card industry, not to mention efforts to reform it. These are all subjects close to my heart. Today it has a new installment in its “Card Game” series with Frontline, this one on the sneaky ways consumer-credit giant Experian and... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/times_maintains_consumer_credi.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/times_maintains_consumer_credi.php The Audit Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:15:37 -0500 Dean Starkman The Murdoch Street Journal has been a slow-motion overhaul, and it takes a minute sometimes to realize that things you skim over today would never have appeared a couple of years ago. “State Death Taxes Are the Latest Worry” “Death tax” isn’t a neutral word so it shouldn’t be used in the news columns, particularly when others are available.... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/foxy_headines_in_the_new_journ.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/foxy_headines_in_the_new_journ.php The Audit Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:09:55 -0500 Dean Starkman For my money, McClatchy’s Goldman series remains the best show these days on business-press Broadway. It’s sort of the “Masterpiece Theater” to Matt Taibbi’s “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” In previous episodes, Goldman is seen selling defective securities while shorting them at the same time and chasing harried jewelry entrepreneurs and bartenders out of house and home,... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/as_goldman_turns.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/as_goldman_turns.php The Audit Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:26:09 -0500 Dean Starkman Speaking of tick-tocks, and I recently was, American Banker's US Banker magazine just published a credible entry on the bank-rescue follies of the fall of 2008 by Jeff Horwitz, who wrote it as a school project upstairs in the Journalism School. Good for him and the school. The minute-by-minute, inside-the-boardroom business-news subgenre has exploded with the... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/american_banker_on_bank_rescue.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/american_banker_on_bank_rescue.php The Audit Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:47:49 -0500