http://www.cjr.org/ en Copyright 2008 Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:59:37 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Ryan Chittum The Center for Responsible Lending, a borrowers’ advocate group, has an eye-opening report on IndyMac, the troubled California mortgage lender. The business-press has too-quickly moved on to breathless debates about the fate of Wall Street houses and other high-concept financial matters without pausing to consider what lay at the root of the credit crisis: deceptive and fraudulent lending... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/a_daming_report_on_indymac.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/a_daming_report_on_indymac.php The Audit Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:59:37 -0500 Ryan Chittum The Onion works its customary magic in its newsstand edition this week with a special edition “All-Paper Salute to the Environment”, that's as to-the-point a mocking of the hypocrisy of the publishing industry’s green issues as we’ve seen. Inside it has a well-worth-reading oldie but a goodie headlined “450,000 Unsold Earth Day Issues of ‘Time’ Trucked To Landfill.” Bonus... http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/skewering_the_magazine_green_i.php http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/skewering_the_magazine_green_i.php The Kicker Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:35:56 -0500 Ryan Chittum http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/burning_the_mortgage.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/burning_the_mortgage.php The Audit Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:47:42 -0500 Ryan Chittum Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson called for better regulatory tools to help prevent the failures of individual financial firms from threatening the entire global system, report The Wall Street Journal on A3 and The New York Times on C2. Paulson said the market thinks some institutions are “too big to fail”, something the government can’t allow to... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/opening_bell_93.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/opening_bell_93.php The Audit Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:35:10 -0500 Ryan Chittum http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/grasso_tko_needs_some_explaini.php http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/grasso_tko_needs_some_explaini.php The Kicker Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:58:26 -0500 Ryan Chittum Now of course, we know all about credit-default swaps. And we know that you know all about credit-default swaps. I mean, who doesn't, after all the talk of them in recent months? Duh. And you'd have to be a moron not to know their relationship to collateralized debt obligations. Hello? But Dean Starkman, who knows everything, thought it might be... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/cds.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/cds.php The Audit Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:15:23 -0500 Ryan Chittum The press has written quite a bit about how the price of gasoline is making the exurban lifestyle cost prohibitive for some. The old “drive until you qualify” for a mortgage dictum, especially in high-price places like California, no longer computes, and home prices in those long-commute towns are getting slammed harder than just about anywhere. ... http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/gas_hits_rural_america_harder.php http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/gas_hits_rural_america_harder.php The Kicker Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:50:35 -0500 Ryan Chittum Over at Slate, Liza Featherstone asks a good question: Why doesn’t Wal-Mart pay its employees as well as Costco does? Costco’s stock, after all, has left Wal-Mart’s in the dust over the last few years and it’s gotten reams of good press. We know what Wal-Mart’s (deservedly) gotten. Featherstone doesn't gloss over the fact that Wal-Mart’s low profit... http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/working_at_the_big_box.php http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/working_at_the_big_box.php The Kicker Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:02:46 -0500 Ryan Chittum Moody’s got rid of an executive after finding “inappropriate” and “deeply disappointing” conduct in his staff’s ratings of financial derivatives. It’s yet another black eye for the credit-ratings industry. The Financial Times, which broke the story in May that forced Moody’s to bring in outside investigators, says on page one that a rating committee “breached internal codes of... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/opening_bell_92.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/opening_bell_92.php The Audit Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:25:50 -0500 Ryan Chittum Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times scores an interview with Blackstone Group chief Stephen Schwarzman, who’s running around town saying an accounting rule is to blame for much of the severity of the credit crisis. Sorkin thinks the whining is so amusing he can hardly keep from laughing in print. A little background: Back in November,... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/blackstone_vs_the_bean_counter.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/blackstone_vs_the_bean_counter.php The Audit Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:55:46 -0500 Ryan Chittum Was Bear Stearns murdered? Vanity Fair asks that provocative question in a riveting but overdone piece on the demise of the investment bank. VF’s Bryan Burrough (author of “Barbarians at the Gate”) never quite gets at why it thinks Bear was taken down by nefarious outsiders, as opposed to its own catastrophic mistakes, instead pointing to CNBC, three firms... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/a_bear_raid.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/a_bear_raid.php The Audit Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:02:29 -0500 Ryan Chittum The U.S. is trying to upend the secrecy of the Swiss banks. The Justice Department asked a federal court to force UBS to reveal its American clients who used it to evade their taxes, The Wall Street Journal says on page one and The New York Times on C3. The investigation is seeking UBS clients who... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/opening_bell_91.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/opening_bell_91.php The Audit Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:29:45 -0500 Ryan Chittum The Washington Post goes above the fold on page one with about as good a slap-down of the bottled-water industry as you’ll ever read. We realize Bottled Water Is Bad has fast become conventional wisdom, but this is a great read: The supply of clean drinking water across America and in many other countries... http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/water_boggle.php http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/water_boggle.php The Kicker Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:12:32 -0500 Ryan Chittum BusinessWeek takes a look in its good cover story at why the housing crisis is just going to get worse: The interventionist housing bill in Congress would only help out about half a million borrowers, conflicts between lenders are preventing them from working out loans, and homeowners are increasingly unable or unwilling to salvage their notes. In... http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/housing_aint_seen_nothin_yet.php http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/housing_aint_seen_nothin_yet.php The Kicker Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:22:36 -0500 Ryan Chittum Gretchen Morgenson in the Sunday Times shed some more light on the UBS auction-ratings securities soon-to-be-scandal (That would make at least two at the Swiss bank, which is also in trouble for helping billionaires evade their taxes and whose vice-chairman Phil Gramm co-chairs John McCain's presidential campaign). Auction-rate securities are the instruments sold to investors as being... http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/unloading_bad_securities.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/unloading_bad_securities.php The Audit Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:22:32 -0500