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The Kicker

Future Telling
April 16, 2008 01:35 PM
Bloomberg Markets’s Stephanie Baker-Said has a nice cover story this month about Nassim Taleb, author of "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable." His book, which was published almost a year ago and is... Continue reading
The Kicker

Mortgage Broker Mojo
April 10, 2008 11:22 AM
On Tuesday the Center for Responsible Lending dropped an interesting study that highlighted the role of mortgage brokers in the subprime debacle. The CRL study of 1.7 million loans between 2004 and 2006 found that mortgage brokers steered... Continue reading
The Kicker

Food (and Energy) for Thought
April 9, 2008 03:19 PM
Elizabeth Spiers, founder of dealbreaker.com, has some interesting if not totally original things to say about inflation in her column in the latest issue of Fortune. Her point is that the insistence on focusing on... Continue reading
The Kicker

Soros on Market Myths
April 3, 2008 12:42 PM
Writing in today's Financial Times, billionaire and philanthropist George Soros calls out Hank Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary for not doing enough heavy lifting to improve regulation of financial institutions. He calls for new thinking not reshuffling... Continue reading
The Audit

Debits & Credits: Trashing Borrowers
March 31, 2008 08:32 AM
The Wall Street Journal gets a Debit this week for a flimsy page-one story on supposed buyers’ revenge causing foreclosed homeowners to trash their homes. These days, bankers and mortgage companies often find that by the... Continue reading
The Audit

Debits and Credits: A Bear Unchallenged
March 17, 2008 08:20 AM
Questions not asked of Bear Stearns ... A Debit to the financial press (The New York Times’ s Gretchen Morgenson is a big exception; see below) for not holding Bear Stearns and its CEO Alan Schwartz to account for... Continue reading
The Audit

Debits and Credits: WSJ’s Fine Subprime Scoop
March 10, 2008 11:03 AM
A big credit to The Wall Street Journal for its scoop Saturday on what will no doubt be a Story to Watch: Countrywide, that always-on-the-up-and-up home lender, is under investigation by the FBI for securities fraud. Here’s... Continue reading
The Audit

Debits and Credits
March 3, 2008 12:21 PM
Debit to Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard for his sunny-yet-dyspeptic column last week headlined “Four Wrong Reasons for Pessimism.” If you think a U.S. recession is here or imminent, you're in good company. Most Intrade bettors believe this and... Continue reading
The Audit

Debits and Credits
February 25, 2008 11:35 AM
Portfolio disappoints this month with its cover story on the oil boom in Iraq. We had bought the magazine on the newsstand for its cover and were pulled in by the headline, “Boomtown, Iraq.” We read that... Continue reading
The Audit

Debits and Credits
February 18, 2008 10:00 AM
Chalk up The New York Times with a debit for not giving a credit. The newspaper makes a small but not insignificant transgression by not name-checking a wire story in its Street Scene column. Last week... Continue reading
The Audit

Debits and Credits
February 11, 2008 10:34 AM
A debit to the Associated Press for getting spun by McClatchy Company on the fourth-quarter earnings of the country’s No. 3 newspaper publisher. The AP headlined its story “McClatchy Swings to a Quarterly Profit.” Problem is, McClatchy... Continue reading
The Audit

Debits and Credits
February 4, 2008 11:34 AM
The unfolding financial crisis puts the general-interest press in a tough spot. It’s not easy to explain a sprawling and often complex story to an audience unfamiliar with the background, not to mention the arcane terminology (commercial mortgage-backed securities,... Continue reading
The Audit

Debits and Credits
January 28, 2008 11:43 AM
A debit to The Wall Street Journal for its page-one press release for Bill Gates on Thursday headlined “Bill Gates Issues Call For Kinder Capitalism.” We’re not sure what about this scoop—hand-delivered from Microsoft and apparently embargoed to... Continue reading
The Audit

The End of Clever Angles
January 23, 2008 04:20 PM
David Leonhardt can't find the counterintuitive angle any more, and for that we can only be grateful. Like the rest of us, he sees the great economic and financial unraveling taking place and can only acknowledges on page one... Continue reading
The Audit

Debits and Credits
January 21, 2008 10:44 AM
A credit to Carrie Johnson and The Washington Post for their page-one story on Tuesday showing how federal prosecutors are setting up former colleagues in government in highly compensated positions with companies accused of malfeasance. The Post not... Continue reading
The Audit

Debits and Credits
January 14, 2008 01:22 PM
A debit to the Associated Press for not getting the joke Wednesday on a nonsensical Katrina-lawsuit number. Its straight-faced story lent credence to the idea that money-grubbing Katrina victims are seeking more than $3 quadrillion from the government.... Continue reading
The Audit

Debits and Credits
January 7, 2008 12:20 PM
A debit to Business Week and its business-celebrity interviewer Maria Bartiromo, for looking the other way in an interview with Richard Perle, an architect of the Iraq war and former director of Hollinger International Inc., the media company... Continue reading
The Audit

Debits and Credits
December 31, 2007 05:09 AM
Editor's note: This Debits and Credits holiday edition reviews the business press from the past two weeks Two days before Christmas The New York Times unwrapped an excellent examination of how broadly the housing bust’s fallout is being... Continue reading
The Audit

Debits and Credits
December 17, 2007 11:29 AM
The Wall Street Journal has a difficult job covering itself and the radical changes it faces with News Corp.’s takeover of Dow Jones & Co. Even so, it did a poor job last week. The Journal’s Thursday... Continue reading
The Audit

Debits and Credits
December 10, 2007 01:17 PM
Fortune published an exclusive interview with Dick Cheney on the economy under the headline, “Why is Dick Cheney Smiling?” The story falls down on a couple of points. We don’t question the news value of the piece—readers can... Continue reading

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