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The Audit

Audit Notes: WSJ Calls Out AT&T; Goldman and Qaddafi; Banks Hit the Road
May 31, 2011 11:45 PM
I wish more papers would do what The Wall Street Journal does today in its story about antitrust concerns over AT&T's bid to gobble up T-Mobile and create a duopoly in cellphone service. Here's AT&T's top lobbyist, Jim... Continue reading
The Audit

Bloomberg’s Thin “Made in the USA” Story
May 31, 2011 12:58 PM
This Bloomberg News story on luxury brands waving the red, white, and blue leaves much to be desired. First, it's one of those annoying trend stories that's neither totally implausible nor firmly supported. The Olsen twins make their high-end... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit Notes: Saudis Blame Wall Street, Made in the U.S., Victims’ Big Haircut
May 27, 2011 08:07 PM
This is very interesting: Kevin G. Hall of McClatchy reports on some Wikileaks cables that show the Saudis telling the Bush administration in 2008 that speculators were to blame for the megaspike in oil prices. Prince Abdulazziz was "extremely... Continue reading
The Audit

Zombie Lie Laboratory Creates 62 Percent Tax Rate Plan
May 27, 2011 02:31 PM
Stephen Moore of The Wall Street Journal editorial board hacks out an instant classic on how to mislead people with numbers. The question-as-headline is your second red flag that this just might be a deeply disingenuous op-ed (the first... Continue reading
The Audit

Elizabeth Warren Is Smeared, and the Press Is Along for the Ride
May 27, 2011 11:29 AM
You'd think the press could resist the he said-she said copy when the truth is easy to discern. Congressman Patrick McHenry's smearing of Elizabeth Warren is a good test of how the press handles dishonest politicians and their lies. And... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit Notes: Bloomberg Blues, Weil Audits Goldman’s Board, Does Not Compute
May 26, 2011 07:54 PM
Slate's Jack Shafer shreds Bloomberg View, the new Bloomberg editorial page. He writes, "I'd rather go blind than look at a world made whole through the Bloomberg View," with its ideology emulating that of the heroic cult leader Mayor... Continue reading
The Audit

Bloomberg Ferrets Out New Details on the Fed’s Bailouts
May 26, 2011 01:43 PM
There were so many bailouts going on in 2008 that Congress apparently forgot about some of them. Bloomberg gets a scoop this morning on details of an $80 billion Federal Reserve lending program that flew under the radar.... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit Notes: Marketers’ Memories, Labor’s Last Legs, Fortune in Afghanistan
May 25, 2011 07:44 PM
Over at Wired, Jonah Lehrer looks at how marketers invade our heads: A new study, published in The Journal of Consumer Research, helps explain both the success of this marketing strategy and my flawed nostalgia for Coke. It turns... Continue reading
The Audit

How to Corner the Oil Market
May 25, 2011 02:56 PM
The papers all play up the big news that Commodity Futures Trading Commission lawsuit is accusing three companies of helping cause the oil spike of 2008 by illegally cornering the market on physical crude oil. The New York Times... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit Notes: Insider Trading on the Hill, Taibbi, Deficit vs. Jobs Coverage
May 24, 2011 08:11 PM
Dan Froomkin of The Huffington Post reports on some very interesting research finding that the investment portfolios of members of Congress substantially outperform the stock market. I'd expect their portfolios to do a bit better than the market average,... Continue reading
The Audit

WaPo Pulls Up Short On Trade and Tariffs
May 24, 2011 02:12 PM
The Washington Post looks at what happens when the U.S. actually fights low-priced Chinese imports with tariffs: The factories move to Vietnam. It's an interesting angle for a story, but as with the paper's story last week... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit Notes: Investigators Eye the Wall Street Mortgage Machine
May 23, 2011 08:19 PM
After years of going nowhere, the investigation of the Wall Street securitization machine behind the financial crisis is finally showing some promise, with probes in New York and California ramping up and even the federales getting into the act. The... Continue reading
The Audit

Outsourcing Investigations to the Suspects
May 23, 2011 12:48 PM
If you're a watchdog/government regulator and you suspect a company of committing crimes, it's probably not the best idea to outsource your investigation to the company suspected of committing the crimes. But that's what the SEC is doing with suspected... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit Notes: The Massey Report, Objectivity Comics, The Ultrawealthy
May 20, 2011 08:06 PM
Here are the ledes from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times stories this morning on the Massey Energy coal disaster report out of West Virginia. The Journal: A 13-month independent investigation into the coal-mine explosion that... Continue reading
The Audit

WNYC On Welfare for the Well-to-Do in the Bronx
May 20, 2011 02:42 PM
Talk about an emblem of welfare for rich folks: Parking garages built for the New York Yankees to accompany their new luxury-suite-stacked stadium in the Bronx. The Yanks are by far the richest team in baseball, and if you're driving... Continue reading
The Audit

A HuffPost Scoop, Overlooked By the Mainstream Press
May 19, 2011 07:43 PM
Shahien Nasiripour scored a foreclosure-fraud scandal scoop for The Huffington Post on Monday, reporting that audits of the mortgage industry conducted by HUD's inspector general found five giant banks—Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial—defrauded... Continue reading
The Audit

LinkedIn Bubble Trouble
May 19, 2011 12:20 PM
I've had a bit of a back and forth on Twitter in the last day with Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal, after BI CEO Henry Blodget yesterdaytweeted "And now a chorus of morons will howl about how LinkedIn's IPO is... Continue reading
The Audit

Audit Notes: McKenna on Lowenstein; U.S., Island Rogue; Stat of the Day
May 18, 2011 06:32 PM
Francine McKenna over at Forbes takes a swing at Roger Lowenstein's "Wall Street: Not Guilty" piece (see my take on that one here). This, about Lehman's Repo 105 scam, is particularly interesting: If there was ever a... Continue reading
The Audit

WaPo Short-Arms a Promising Piece on Factory Jobs
May 18, 2011 12:25 PM
The Washington Post gives us an interesting but blurry snapshot of the economy, looking at how the news about manufacturing, which is one of the few sources of real growth, isn't necessarily all that good. This is the dominant... Continue reading
The Audit

Lowenstein Lets Wall Street Off the Hook
May 17, 2011 02:37 PM
Roger Lowenstein has a big piece out in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, an apology for Wall Street—duly celebrated by The New York Times's Andrew Ross Sorkin on Twitter as "courageous" and "probably right"—arguing "Wall Street: Not Guilty."   What's with our... Continue reading

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