Author Archive

Articles by Ryan Chittum | Email the Author

 

1. The Audit

   It’s the WSJ’s Turn on Romney’s Private Equity Record

   January 9, 2012 02:34 PM

   Mitt Romney's tenure at private-equity firm Bain Capital is the gift that will keep on giving for journalists. Reuters reported last week that a Romney purchase required a federal bailout, even though Bain made big money on it. The... Continue reading

2. The Audit

   Audit Notes: GE and Subprime, WaPo on Recess, Fed Fumes on Housing

   January 6, 2012 08:04 PM

   The Center for Public Integrity’s Michael Hudson continues one of the most important series of the last year, on how the mortgage industry ignored or crushed whistleblowers who tried to point out systemic fraud during the bubble. Today, Hudson... Continue reading

3. The Audit

   Reuters on Romney’s Private-Equity Past

   January 6, 2012 03:15 PM

   Reuters has a great look today at how Mitt Romney's Bain Capital loaded up a steel company with debt, mismanaged it, drove it into bankruptcy, dumped tens of millions of dollars of pension obligations on the federal government after... Continue reading

4. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Citi Fees, A Bipartisan Bloomberg Dream, The Toil Index

   January 5, 2012 08:16 PM

   Felix Salmon reports on an awful new fee Citigroup has cooked up to milk its customers. The bank will charge you $414 in the first year and $39 a year thereafter to withdraw money from your account biweekly to... Continue reading

5. The Audit

   The WSJ Eyes Analyst-Shopping

   January 5, 2012 03:17 PM

   Call me naive, but I didn't know that companies launching IPOs were still overtly shopping around for banks with favorable analysts—a conflict of interest that caused some of the most memorable scandals of the dot.com bubble era. The Wall Street... Continue reading

6. The Audit

   Best of 2011: Ryan Chittum

   December 30, 2011 01:36 AM

   Rupert Murdoch and the Corporate Culture of News Corp. On the pressing question of how much Rupert Murdoch is a part of the corrupt culture at News Corporation, I wrote that Murdoch is the culture. Nodding to Jay... Continue reading

7. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Newsstand Success, Paywalls and Tacos, WSJ on Debt Collectors

   December 23, 2011 05:05 PM

   How much has Apple's Newsstand increased sales of magazine apps. It's hard to say, but Peter Kafka posts a chart showing Popular Science, at least, has clearly benefited: That spike toward the end coincides with... Continue reading

8. The Audit

   The Guardian’s Big Hacking-Scandal Error

   December 23, 2011 01:14 PM

   When The Guardian dropped its Milly Dowler bombshell back in July, I called the News Corporation hacking it reported "abhorrent and illegal." But I reserved the harshest words ("downright evil") for the News of the World's alleged deletion... Continue reading

9. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Rattner Gets a Pass, NYT’s Golden Parachute, No Rhodes Scholar

   December 22, 2011 06:50 PM

   New York Times reporter Geraldine Fabrikant writes a column for Reuters, oddly, on the pass former New York Times reporter, private-equity financier, and Obama car czar Steven Rattner is getting in elite company: Always an avid courtier of the... Continue reading

10. The Audit

    The Journal on Congress’s Inside Dope for Investors

    December 22, 2011 05:07 PM

    The Wall Street Journal continues to investigate the fuzzy intersection between Congress and insider trading, with a good page-one story yesterday on how investors are lining up to meet with Congress and coming away with potentially market-moving information that's... Continue reading

11. The Audit

    Bloomberg Takes on the Big Lie of the Crisis

    December 21, 2011 03:16 PM

    Bloomberg takes a crack at knocking down what Barry Ritholtz correctly calls the Big Lie of the crisis, that government regulation—not private sector recklessness—caused it. This falsehood has taken hold on a big chunk of the right,... Continue reading

12. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Nocera on Frannie, The Fed’s Politics, Confidence Game

    December 20, 2011 11:45 PM

    Joe Nocera writes that the SEC's case against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives is "extraordinarily weak," relying on the bogus, debunked data of the American Enterprise Institute: Taking its cues from the Wallison/Pinto school of inflated data, it... Continue reading

13. The Audit

    On the Record From Inside a Gilded Bubble

    December 20, 2011 04:29 PM

    Bloomberg's Max Abelson has quite an eye for the ridiculous. He's dug up an AIG executive's blame-shifting for the financial crisis, called out Meredith Whitney's gibberish on muni bonds, and got a senior Wall Street... Continue reading

14. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Inflation Inflation, FT on Frannie, Deep Downturns

    December 19, 2011 11:43 PM

    Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong catch Niall Ferguson in a whopper on inflation. Ferguson: And the reason the CPI is losing credibility is that, as economist John Williams tirelessly points out, it’s a bogus index. The way... Continue reading

15. The Audit

    Baby Doomers: The Trilogy

    December 19, 2011 04:10 PM

    Back in February, The Wall Street Journal's Jim Browning looked at how the Boomers are the first generation to retire after the move by companies from defined-benefit pensions to defined-contribution 401(k)s, which looks to be a bust of historic... Continue reading

16. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Walmart Rewrite, AMR’s Strategic Default, Debtors’ Prison

    December 16, 2011 06:20 PM

    When The Huffington Post's Lila Pearl Shapiro wrote a critical story about Walmart's labor practices earlier this week, the company gave it a sort of reprint in its internal news service. It just happened to leave out all... Continue reading

17. The Audit

    Bloomberg Bird-Dogs Meredith Whitney’s Terrible Call

    December 16, 2011 03:57 PM

    Remember Meredith Whitney's apocalyptic predictions on the municipal-bond market last year? Bloomberg News does. And it makes sure Whitney and its readers do too. Whitney last year predicted a catastrophe in municipal bonds—hundreds of billions of dollars of defaults... Continue reading

18. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Bloomberg Empire Edition

    December 15, 2011 06:46 PM

    Reuters's Jack Shafer writes that Bloomberg BusinessWeek has become the best magazine in the country, his "primary source of long-form, print journalism": Who would have thought that “Bloomberg” and “BusinessWeek,” the two most plodding names in the history of... Continue reading

19. The Audit

    Hudson on the Corporate Culture of Countrywide

    December 15, 2011 01:12 PM

    The Center for Public Integrity's Michael Hudson continues to turn up whistleblowers and pound on the culture of wrongdoing at the predatory lenders that created the housing catastrophe. The Justice Department famously declined to go after executives, including former... Continue reading

20. The Audit

    Audit Notes: CDS Watch, Murdoch’s Email, Fracking and Quaking

    December 14, 2011 06:16 PM

    The Wall Street Journal has a good look at how European banks have been busy writing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of credit-default swaps on PIIIGS sovereign debt: The numbers show European banks have sold a total of... Continue reading

1. « Previous
2. 1
3. 2
4. 3
5. 4
6. 5
7. 6
8. 7
9. 8
10. 9
11. 10
12. 11
13. 12
14. 13
15. 14
16. 15
17. 16
18. 17
19. 18
20. 19
21. 20
22. 21
23. 22
24. 23
25. 24
26. 25
27. 26
28. 27
29. 28
30. 29
31. 30
32. 31
33. 32
34. 33
35. 34
36. 35
37. 36
38. 37
39. 38
40. 39
41. 40
42. 41
43. 42
44. 43
45. 44
46. 45
47. 46
48. 47
49. 48
50. 49
51. 50
52. 51
53. 52
54. 53
55. 54
56. 55
57. 56
58. 57
59. 58
60. 59
61. 60
62. 61
63. 62
64. 63
65. 64
66. 65
67. 66
68. 67
69. 68
70. 69
71. 70
72. 71
73. 72
74. 73
75. 74
76. 75
77. 76
78. 77
79. 78
80. 79
81. 80
82. 81
83. 82
84. 83
85. 84
86. 85
87. 86
88. 87
89. 88
90. 89
91. 90
92. 91
93. 92
94. 93
95. 94
96. 95
97. 96
98. 97
99. 98
100. 99
101. 100
102. 101
103. 102
104. 103
105. 104
106. 105
107. 106
108. 107
109. 108
110. 109
111. 110
112. 111
113. 112
114. 113
115. 114
116. 115
117. 116
118. 117
119. 118
120. Next »