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Articles by Ryan Chittum | Email the Author

 

1. The Audit

   Jack Welch and anti-business sentiment

   October 8, 2012 06:50 AM

   Former GE CEO Jack Welch made waves last week claiming—with zero evidence—that the Obama administration manipulated the unemployment report that showed joblessness dropping to 7.8 percent last month. Now that's kooky. But it's not too surprising coming from Welch (whom... Continue reading

2. The Audit

   Bleacher Report and the race to the bottom

   October 5, 2012 01:32 PM

   Bleacher Report is a sort of Demand Media of sports, a content farm engineered to get search engine visits with lowest common denominator clickbait. And it's a heck of a business. Where Demand pays people, even if only... Continue reading

3. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Romney and taxes, prison phone racket, WSJ

   October 5, 2012 06:50 AM

   Nobody can figure out what exactly Mitt Romney wants to do with taxes. His plan is mathematically impossible, and Wednesday night's debate just confused matters even more. The candidate actually said at one point in the debate that... Continue reading

4. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Mansion, inequality and the crash, FT on Schneiderman

   October 4, 2012 06:50 AM

   The business press continues to roll out the 0.1 percent porn. Now it's The Wall Street Journal launching a new weekly real estate section called, no joke: Mansion. It'll fit right in with WSJ. magazine, the NYT's T, the... Continue reading

5. The Audit

   Forbes’s myth of the Reagan boom

   October 3, 2012 06:40 PM

   Peter Ferrara, currently of the climate-change denying Heartland Institute and formerly of Jack Abramoff's payroll and the Reagan and Bush I administrations, writes for Forbes that Mitt Romney will cut middle class taxes, no matter what Barack... Continue reading

6. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Insert hospice joke here, Web pagination, too big to value

   October 3, 2012 06:50 AM

   The Washington Post is getting into the hospice business, which prompted a few too many obvious jokes about death and newspapers. But lots of people are understandably wondering what the Post is thinking. After the hospice surprise wears off, it... Continue reading

7. The Audit

   Romney’s gift to reporters

   October 2, 2012 07:50 AM

   The decision by Republicans to run a super-wealthy former financier for president four years into a serious economic downturn triggered by a financial crisis was a contrarian political move, to put it mildly, and it has had unwelcome consequences for... Continue reading

8. The Audit

   Audit Notes: wincing with WSJ, Golden Dawn, energy-market manipulation

   October 2, 2012 06:50 AM

   The Wall Street Journal reports that President Obama is trying to fire up the base with trial balloons on who will be his post-Geithner Treasury Secretary: Former Citigroup exec Jacob Lew and Erskine Bowles of Simpson-Bowles. I kid about... Continue reading

9. The Audit

   Audit Notes: inside the Fed, few use Twitter, entitled ‘job creators’

   October 1, 2012 06:50 AM

   The Wall Street Journal takes us inside how Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke convinced his colleagues to go all in on a third round of quantitative easing, in a nice page one story: Mr. Bernanke didn't see inflation as a... Continue reading

10. The Audit

    Billionaires made from scratch? Hardly

    September 28, 2012 06:50 AM

    Forbes touts its annual list of the 400 richest U.S. billionaires as evidence "that the American dream is still very much alive," claiming that 70 percent of them "made their fortunes entirely from scratch." I noted that... Continue reading

11. The Audit

    Audit Notes: NYT’s Web bonanza, Doctor on paywalls, capital gains taxes

    September 28, 2012 12:46 AM

    The New York Times Company has sold its stake in the Indeed.com jobs site for $100 million profit, which ain't bad, considering it bought it for just $5 million or so in 2005. That's a 2000 percent return in seven... Continue reading

12. The Audit

    Smartphone money

    September 27, 2012 06:50 AM

    The Wall Street Journal is good to take a look at how smartphone bills are eating up a chunk of middle class household budgets, reporting that spending on iPhones and such is going up while families cut back elsewhere:... Continue reading

13. The Audit

    The capital gains preference

    September 26, 2012 07:26 AM

    Forbes, as Joe Nocera points out this morning, thinks that its list of the 400 richest US billionaires "instills confidence that the American dream is still very much alive." That's because, Forbes says, "Seventy percent of the Forbes... Continue reading

14. The Audit

    Audit Notes: newspaper war, inflation fears, executive pay

    September 25, 2012 06:50 AM

    The Times-Picayune plans to move into Baton Rouge to hit back at the Advocate's move into New Orleans. But publisher Ricky Mathews says that move was planned all along, well before the Baton Rouge Advocate announced it would print... Continue reading

15. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Digital First takedown, here comes the WSJ, debt and taxes

    September 24, 2012 10:51 AM

    Brett Sokol, writes one of the most brutal piece of media criticism I've read in a long time. He examines the promise of Digital First Media by looking at its flagship newspaper, the New Haven Register—and its... Continue reading

16. The Audit

    The Newhouses strike back

    September 21, 2012 03:00 PM

    After Advance Publications announced it would gut the still-profitable New Orleans Times-Picayune's newsroom and slash publication to three days a week, the Baton Rouge Advocate's Manship family saw an opportunity. The Advocate, which killed its New Orleans bureau a... Continue reading

17. The Audit

    The inflation bugaboo, back again for QE3

    September 20, 2012 06:50 AM

    If you've followed the financial press or have seen Ron Paul talk in the last few years, you've heard all about the supposed runaway inflation we're about to experience any day now because of all the money the Fed is... Continue reading

18. The Audit

    Audit Notes: high-frequency trading, Ann Arbor news, SEC access

    September 20, 2012 02:25 AM

    The Wall Street Journal has a good page-one story and scoop on a high-frequency trader turned whistleblower whose complaint has sparked a big investigation by regulators into whether exchanges are screwing small investors: He became convinced exchanges were providing... Continue reading

19. The Audit

    Audit Notes: ‘makers and takers’ edition

    September 19, 2012 06:50 AM

    A big part of the problem with Mitt Romney's "47 percent" characterization, as I wrote yesterday, is that it uses federal income tax to snooker people not paying close attention into thinking half the country pays no taxes at... Continue reading

20. The Audit

    Mitt Romney and the Lucky Duckies

    September 18, 2012 03:28 PM

    Who are the 47 percent, why were Mitt Romney's comments on them so wrong, and how did Romney come to such a misunderstanding of the country? First, for background here's Romney's quote: All right, there are forty-seven per cent who... Continue reading

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