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Articles by Ryan Chittum | Email the Author

 

1. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Corporate Welfare for BP, (Financial) Markets First, Facebook

   May 26, 2010 07:25 PM

   The Los Angeles Times has a terrific story pointing out that Washington larded up the oil companies with tax breaks five years ago for deep-sea drilling. At the time, drilling was already proceeding at a brisk pace, and industry... Continue reading

2. The Audit

   WSJ Again Pulls Back the Curtains on Window Dressing

   May 26, 2010 06:53 PM

   The Wall Street Journal continues its excellent work on the Wall Street "window dressing" story, which it broke early last month. Michael Rapoport and Tom McGinty find that Bank of America, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank—too big to... Continue reading

3. The Audit

   More on Hyped Atlantic Headlines

   May 26, 2010 05:21 PM

   Mollie brings up a great point in comments on my earlier post on sensational, misleading headlines at the Atlantic. She notes that this kind of hype isn't limited to The Atlantic's Web site. The magazine had a reprehensible headline... Continue reading

4. The Audit

   The Financial Industry’s Threadbare Astroturf

   May 26, 2010 10:37 AM

   Mike Konczal reports on a scrambled-together lobbying effort by the banks along with Visa and Mastercard to defeat the interchange-fee amendment in the financial reform bill. Because here's the funny part: You have to suddenly believe that all these... Continue reading

5. The Audit

   Sorry, Porn Didn’t Cause TK Regulatory Failure

   May 26, 2010 09:53 AM

   Here's an example of one of the all-time most-annoying Web journalism tricks. Daniel Indiviglio at The Atlantic's site has this headline: Did Porn Cause the Oil Spill in the Gulf? His lede? (emphasis mine): No. But regulators looking at... Continue reading

6. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Blankfein and Barber, Another BP OIl Spill, Box Offices and Onions

   May 25, 2010 11:13 PM

   Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor Alan Murray has a good question on Twitter for the Financial Times: So the Financial Times is joined by Goldman Sachs in judging the "Best Business Book of Year." Lloyd Blankfein is... Continue reading

7. The Audit

   WSJ.com Lacks Link Luster

   May 25, 2010 05:43 PM

   Jeff Bercovici and Felix Salmon point to a Project for Excellence in Journalism study for a cautionary tale on paywalls killing in-links and thus traffic. The BBC, CNN, The New York Times, and the Washington Post, accounted... Continue reading

8. The Audit

   Small Banks Did Not Perform Worst in This Crisis

   May 25, 2010 01:23 PM

   The Atlantic's Derek Thompson quotes a friend in finance saying: "Small banks did the worst in this crisis," he once wrote to me. "Making banks smaller would not have changed a thing. If you have 100 little banks with... Continue reading

9. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Hardly a Nick, European Fallout, Shopping for Ratings

   May 24, 2010 06:25 PM

   I wrote this morning that the financial-reform bill is like taking a firebug's matches away and leaving him with his blowtorch. A slap on the wrist that won't do much of anything to prevent the fire next time. For... Continue reading

10. The Audit

    Bloomberg Investigates a “Double Irish” Corporate Tax Scheme

    May 24, 2010 04:31 PM

    A tip of The Audit's cap to Bloomberg, which had an excellent investigation last week on a big way corporations avoid paying their fair share of income tax. Reporter Jesse Drucker, yet another Wall Street Journal ex-pat, investigated Forest... Continue reading

11. The Audit

    The Times on What Financial Reform Really Means

    May 24, 2010 12:07 PM

    Binyamin Appelbaum of The New York Times has the smartest take I've seen yet on what the impending passage of financial reform means. I've read news stories for three days that just haven't really gotten at the big picture.... Continue reading

12. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Pretty Pensions, Private Equity Walks, Payday Lenders Skate

    May 21, 2010 07:17 PM

    Kudos to the Times’s Mary Williams Walsh and Amy Schoenfeld for a corker of an exposé on six-figure pensions larding up New York State’s public employee pension system. The lead is pretty strong: In Yonkers, more than... Continue reading

13. The Audit

    Mostly Muddled Coverage of the Housing Market

    May 21, 2010 05:50 PM

    How optimistic should we be about the housing market? After reading press coverage of April's mortgage stats, you'd be forgiven for being utterly confused on that count. Slate's Daniel Gross says: ...there are tentative signs that improvement is coming... Continue reading

14. The Audit

    The Journal Reveals Another Facebook Privacy Gaffe

    May 21, 2010 11:30 AM

    The Wall Street Journal gets a nice Facebook/MySpace privacy scoop this morning, reporting that the sites—particularly Facebook—send along personal-identification information to advertisers. The potential legal problem is that these sites tell their users they don't do that. This is... Continue reading

15. The Audit

    Audit Notes: A-hed Hed, Deflation, BW or BBW?

    May 20, 2010 07:42 PM

    Headline of the Week goes to The Wall Street Journal for this A-hed: In England, Buying the Farm Can Be a Fate Worse Than Debt Under Ancient Law, Mr. Wallbank Found He Owed a Fortune to Fix a Nearby... Continue reading

16. The Audit

    All the Banks in Georgia

    May 20, 2010 01:46 PM

    It's a good idea to point out that small banks are failing, too. This is hardly a news flash, but it's important to revisit this since so much of the financial reform proposals, ridiculously, exempt small banks from their restrictions.... Continue reading

17. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Not-So-Goldman Advice, One Source Stories, Facebook

    May 19, 2010 09:43 PM

    Bloomberg reports that even though Goldman Sachs, along with other banks, won on every day at the dog tracks last quarter, its clients haven't done quite as well if they followed its start-of-the-year advice. Seven of the investment bank’s... Continue reading

18. The Audit

    Tribune Investigation Finds Mercury-Laced Skin Creams

    May 19, 2010 09:07 PM

    A terrific investigation today by the Chicago Tribune discovered high levels of mercury in skin-whitening creams on shelves across Chicago. Twelve percent of the fifty skin creams it sent for lab testing had illegal levels of mercury. This is... Continue reading

19. The Audit

    The New York Times’s Devastating Goldman Piece

    May 19, 2010 11:18 AM

    The New York Times goes long on the conflict machine that is Goldman Sachs. It's a devastating synthesis of what's wrong about how the firm does business, with plenty of new information to serve as fodder for future investigations.... Continue reading

20. The Audit

    Audit Notes: WSJ Win, Tully Calls a Crash, Sugar Shock

    May 18, 2010 08:20 PM

    The Wall Street Journal has been doing solid work on the BP/Transocean oil spill, and today's paper has another good example, reporting on the years of disasters and warnings on deep-sea drilling that went unheeded. Without adequately planning for... Continue reading

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