http://www.cjr.org/ en Copyright 2009 Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:48:34 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Ryan Chittum It's The New York Times turn to do a nice story on "overdraft protection" practices. The Journal had one yesterday and the Washington Post did this weekend. Today, Felix Salmon of Reuters picks up the ball and advances it, too. First, the Times piece. Eric Dash has a snappy take on the issue, rounding up lots... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/amplifying_the_drumbeat_on_the.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/amplifying_the_drumbeat_on_the.php The Audit Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:48:34 -0500 Ryan Chittum That didn't take long. The Journal reports this morning that Wall Street compensation is on track to possibly outdo 2007 levels. The paper doesn't explicitly say it, but that would set an all-time record. Goldman Sachs employees are on pace for a $673,000 payday, according to the WSJ average of analysts' estimates. Morgan Stanley employees are headed for a... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/journal_wall_street_pay_could.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/journal_wall_street_pay_could.php The Audit Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:36:17 -0500 Ryan Chittum It's rare to read a genuinely good personal-finance story, so I was glad to see Karen Blumenthal's column in The Wall Street Journal today take a hard look at how banks aid scam artists. Blumenthal's relative was getting involved with those telemarketer scam artists that prey on the elderly. He ended up sending money to scammers and overdrawing his... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/wsj_shows_how_personalfinance.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/wsj_shows_how_personalfinance.php The Audit Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:21:52 -0500 Ryan Chittum http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/nyt_banks_gearing_up_to_kill_n.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/nyt_banks_gearing_up_to_kill_n.php The Audit Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:57:14 -0500 Ryan Chittum http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/propublica_post_watchdog_senat.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/propublica_post_watchdog_senat.php The Audit Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:33:31 -0500 Ryan Chittum How can The New York Times be this gullible? The paper writes about Dr Pepper Snapple outsourcing its information technology to an Indian company but somehow comes up with the idea that this will (or, weasel word: "may") result in more jobs in the U.S. The story says the Indian firm, HCL Technologies, "may be hiring in the United... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/ny_times_chugs_the_dr_pepper.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/ny_times_chugs_the_dr_pepper.php The Audit Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:23:50 -0500 Ryan Chittum The LA Times has an interesting article today on an overlooked aspect of tax policy: The "nexus" exemption for Internet and catalog retailers. It focuses on Amazon's threats to remove an affiliate program that several states are using to try to tax the online giant's sales. As it is, most states can't charge sales tax on a book if... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/lat_raises_the_nexus_salestax.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/lat_raises_the_nexus_salestax.php The Audit Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:57:42 -0500 Ryan Chittum http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/propublica_the_post_bring_ge_i.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/propublica_the_post_bring_ge_i.php The Audit Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:28:16 -0500 Ryan Chittum It's bad enough to write a two-source story about plagiarism. It's worse when the two sources are the plagiarist and a defender. But that's what the Los Angeles Times does in its piece on Chris Anderson's new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price in which he borrows liberally from Wikipedia, of all places. The LAT primarily quotes... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/lat_softpedals_wired_editors_p.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/lat_softpedals_wired_editors_p.php The Audit Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:13:12 -0500 Ryan Chittum The New York Times descends into customer-service hell on A1 today, reporting on the effort to modify mortgages under the Obama foreclosure plan. Reporter Peter S. Goodman spent two days listening in on calls at a mortgage-modification company to come back with this dispatch, which illustrates well why the foreclosure-prevention plan hasn't done a whole lot in the few... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/nyt_listens_in_as_the_mortgage.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/nyt_listens_in_as_the_mortgage.php The Audit Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:43:08 -0500 Ryan Chittum Felix Salmon takes John Carney of Clusterstock to task for latching on to the right-wing effort to blame the housing bubble and financial crisis (or at least a good part of it) on the Community Reinvestment Act, a law passed in the year of my birth thirty-two years ago. I thought we had dispensed with this discredited argument, but... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/a_community_reinvestment_act_r.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/a_community_reinvestment_act_r.php The Audit Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:27:48 -0500 Ryan Chittum Maria Bartiromo's BusinessWeek interviews aren't exactly must-read business journalism. But this is ridiculous. What would you ask if you got a sitdown with Obama's economic svengali Larry Summers? I'm sure you can think of a dozen or so off the top of your head, any of which would be better than Bartiromo's softballs. Bartiromo, whose day job, of... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/bartiromos_and_bizweeks_embarr.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/bartiromos_and_bizweeks_embarr.php The Audit Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:31:17 -0500 Ryan Chittum The Wall Street Journal looks at how the new consumer-protection regulator is likely to make banks less profitable. I like how the paper all but says that's because the banks won't be able to screw their customers as blatantly anymore. The paper says the new regulations would "take the industry back in time" and force it to offer "plain-vanilla"... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/wsj_states_the_obviousin_a_goo.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/wsj_states_the_obviousin_a_goo.php The Audit Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:37:19 -0500 Ryan Chittum Here's a great idea for a business blog. An anonymous somebody is going back through Depression-era Wall Street Journals day by day and summarizing just what was going on back then. The result is "News from 1930, which tells us what was going on on this date in 1930. It's interesting in a history-buff kind of way but also... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/what_the_wsj_looked_like_in_19.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/what_the_wsj_looked_like_in_19.php The Audit Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:44:03 -0500 Ryan Chittum Bloomberg has a welcome, long profile of Paul Volcker, the legendary former Fed chairman who's been shouldered to the background as an Obama adviser by Larry Summers, who got F's on his elementary school report cards in “plays well with others.” Reporter Yalman Onaran has a perfect lede here illustrating how much of an outsider this “insider” is... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/bloomberg_profiles_volcker_oba_1.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/bloomberg_profiles_volcker_oba_1.php The Audit Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:07:16 -0500