The Free Press Probes Fannie and Freddie

The giant bailout recipients are dumping inventory in Detroit and pushing foreclosures over modifications

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 15, 2011 at 05:55 PM

A Detroit Free Press investigation raises some interesting questions about why government-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are pushing foreclosures... More

Audit Notes: JPMorgan’s Denuded County, Recession Watch, Reporting Rumors

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 12, 2011 at 04:14 PM

Bloomberg News revisits JPMorgan Chase's screwing of Jefferson County, Alabama, as the county debates whether to file for bankruptcy because... More

The WSJ Advances the Foreign-Exchange Gouging Story

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 12, 2011 at 02:10 PM

The Wall Street Journal has a good investigation that advances its series of stories looking at how banks, and particularly... More

Ace in the Hole (1951)

What a sixty-year-old noir can tell us about the Murdoch hacking scandal

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 12, 2011 at 11:15 AM

I’ve got Murdoch on the brain, but I couldn’t help thinking about the News of the World scandal while watching... More

Audit Notes: Picturing the Turmoil, WSJ vs. SmartMoney, Long Crisis

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 11, 2011 at 06:40 PM

Lots of people are linking the Brokers With Hands On Their Faces Blog in the midst of the market turmoil... More

SmartMoney Makes a Hash of the Downgrade

Says borrowers face higher rates, despite sinking Treasury yields

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 10, 2011 at 06:17 PM

Speaking of the Journal overhyping the S&P downgrade of U.S. Treasurys, its sister magazine SmartMoney has a doozy of a... More

The Journal Hypes the Downgrade

A three-day-old story gets the overkill treatment

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 10, 2011 at 02:44 PM

That Standard & Poor's downgraded the U.S. from AAA to AA+ is a big story no doubt. But The Wall... More

Audit Notes: Murdoch’s Board, Hedge Funds Selling

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 9, 2011 at 07:35 PM

How awful is News Corporation's corporate governance (among other things)? Bloomberg News on Viet Dinh, the guy who wrote the... More

The Long Crisis

The current tumult had its origins in the housing bust and Crash of 2008

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 9, 2011 at 04:54 PM

The Wall Street Journal's new Money & Investing chief, Francesco Guerrera, has an awfully narrow perspective about "Why This Crisis... More

Market Mess

Troubles pile up for the financial system and the economy

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 8, 2011 at 08:18 PM

What happened in the markets today? Good luck figuring that out (you can't, really). Let's just say it's some combination... More

Blaming the Audience: Almost Always a Bad Idea

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 8, 2011 at 01:57 PM

Marketplace's Heidi N. Moore lays into a listener for getting upset about Wall Street wanting to cut her entitlements. In... More

Audit Notes: Decline and Fall, Inflation Falls Again, Stress Indicators

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 5, 2011 at 08:18 PM

Your Decline and Fall Moment of the Day comes from Standard & Poor's, the credit-ratings firm that was a core... More

Audit Notes: Panic in the Markets

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 4, 2011 at 08:03 PM

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 512 points today, some 4.3 percent, as panic takes hold in global markets. The... More

Excellent Reporting on the Revolving Door By American Banker

Paper’s FOIA request shows a former FHA commish palling around with his future employer

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 4, 2011 at 01:46 PM

American Banker has a terrific story on the revolving door, digging into the records of former Federal Housing Authority commissioner... More

Audit Notes: Some Recovery, Tom Watson Profiled, Debt Myths

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 3, 2011 at 07:48 PM

Calculated Risk gives us four indicators the National Bureau of Economic Research uses to call and date recessions and recoveries.... More

WSJ Fronts Amazon’s Tax Avoidance Strategy

Color-coded maps tell employees which states are safe, bad, and neutral

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 3, 2011 at 06:38 PM

It's nice to see The Wall Street Journal take a page-one look at Amazon's aggressive tax avoidance, something I've written... More

The Wall Street Journal: Murdochification Watch

The paper runs a thinly sourced, and quickly denied, scoop on non-News Corp. bribes

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 2, 2011 at 10:06 PM

Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, unsurprisingly, hasn't done a whole lot of digging on the News Corp. hacking scandal. Or... More

Despite Debt Ceiling Deal, Wishy-Washy Stock Market Stories

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 2, 2011 at 03:14 PM

The House approved the debt-ceiling/spending cuts deal after markets closed yesterday, and the Senate passed it today. The Dow is... More

Audit Notes: The Murdoch Lobby at Work, Davies in America, Audit Radio

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 2, 2011 at 12:42 AM

Roger Cohen, author of one of the worst Murdoch apologies of the hacking scandal, heads to David Cameron and Rebekah... More

Follow a 99er Through the Press As the Money Runs Out

The long jobs crisis, with no end in sight, should prompt us to revisit older stories

By Ryan Chittum   Aug 1, 2011 at 01:32 PM

Now that it's certain that our leaders have gone all in on austerity, despite a 9.2 percent unemployment rate and... More