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Articles by Ryan Chittum | Email the Author

 

1. The Audit

   Greywolf, Timberwolf, Blackwolf?

   April 27, 2010 06:52 PM

   Matthew Goldstein of Reuters has been sniffing around Goldman Sach's Greywolf and Timberwolf transactions since last August. Timberwolf is the deal immortalized today by grandpa Carl Levin's, D-Mich., repeated quoting of a Goldman executive calling it a "shitty deal."... Continue reading

2. The Audit

   But Why Didn’t Regulators Regulate?

   April 27, 2010 02:03 PM

   Bethany McLean mostly misses with her column in The New York Times on who's really to blame in the sordid Abacus scandal. Yet, in the end, it comes down to this: Goldman Sachs, ACA Capital, IKB Deutsche Industriebank and... Continue reading

3. The Audit

   Audit Notes: WSJ Blotter, Deutsche CDOs, Wall Street Praised for Its Self Control

   April 26, 2010 08:47 PM

   The Wall Street Journal's much-anticipated New York section arrived today, but your humble Seattle Audit bureau didn't get it in his paper and hasn't lived in New York for two years. So I'll pass on a comprehensive review for... Continue reading

4. The Audit

   Apple’s Aggression Against the Press (Yep, Gizmodo Counts)

   April 26, 2010 06:30 PM

   Gawker Media's Gizmodo got hold of a lost iPhone prototype last week after paying the person who found it $5,000. It has since reaped some 8.6 million views of that single post. Now, police in San Mateo, California, (the... Continue reading

5. The Audit

   FT Buries the Lede on Ex-SEC Officials and Goldman

   April 26, 2010 04:52 PM

   I did a double-take this weekend while reading the Financial Times. The paper put out a story headlined "Handling of Goldman case under attack" that said "several former high-ranking SEC officials"—almost all of them unnamed—were bashing the SEC for... Continue reading

6. The Audit

   Chris Ware Shows Fortune the Mirror on the 500

   April 26, 2010 09:57 AM

   Surely, the times call for pointed critiques of corporate America. Fortune commissioned the cartoonist Chris Ware to propose a cover for its Fortune 500 issue, which is sort of like the September Vogue of the financial press. Ware came... Continue reading

7. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Ritholtz, Google Spies, Schumer Shies on Shilling

   April 23, 2010 05:26 PM

   Barry Ritholtz writes a superb post on the Goldman Sachs Abacus scandal. Wall Street loves complexity because it either tricks people or keeps them from scrutinizing it. Ritholtz makes a persuasive case for why the case isn't that complicated... Continue reading

8. The Audit

   WSJ Blows the Ratings-Agencies Story

   April 23, 2010 04:26 PM

   The Wall Street Journal does a terrible job today of covering the ratings-agency investigation news, which is a big deal (to state what should be the obvious). A Senate panel released smoking-gun emails showing Standard & Poor's and Moody's... Continue reading

9. The Audit

   The Times Forgets Its Own Goldman Reporting

   April 23, 2010 10:42 AM

   One key part of Goldman Sachs's defense in the Abacus scandal is that it lost a pile of money on the deal investing in it, so it couldn't be guilty of deliberately torching it. The New York Times has played... Continue reading

10. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Michael Lewis, Sebastian Mallaby, Bill Black

    April 22, 2010 06:05 PM

    Michael Lewis explains very clearly to the too-clever-by-half folks over at Goldman Sachs (an Audit funder) why what they did with Abacus was so wrong. His thoughts on ACA, the CDO manager, are particularly worth reading. These guys are... Continue reading

11. The Audit

    Reuters’s Beefed-Up Enterprise Reporting Is Paying Off

    April 22, 2010 02:07 PM

    Reuters and Murray Waas are at it again with another great health-care investigation. It shows how WellPoint, the second-largest health insurer in the country by market cap, systematically targeted customers with breast cancer to find excuses to drop their... Continue reading

12. The Audit

    WSJ’s Good Idea on Abacus Needed More Context

    April 22, 2010 11:41 AM

    I like that The Wall Street Journal zeroes in on the specific homeowners at the core of the Abacus bet. As it says: It was a dizzyingly complex transaction, involving 90 bonds and a 65-page deal sheet. But it... Continue reading

13. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Yes, There Was a Housing Bubble; Magnetar; Facebook

    April 21, 2010 10:58 PM

    Dean Baker bizarrely dismisses the role Wall Street chicanery had in inflating the bubble: It Was the Housing Bubble: Not the Damn CDOs But has been made abundantly clear, CDOs were critical part of the housing bubble, especially in... Continue reading

14. The Audit

    Goldman’s Forked Tongue

    April 21, 2010 09:43 AM

    Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal punctured one of Goldman Sach's self-defenses in the Abacus scandal: That it lost $90 million on the deal, so it couldn't have had economic incentive to structure it to fail. Well, actually, y'all... Continue reading

15. The Audit

    Bloomberg’s One-Source Wonders

    April 21, 2010 04:27 AM

    Take a TV interviewee, type up what they say, and print a one-source story. That's a bad recipe for journalism. Particularly if the one source is someone who's said off-the-wall things that you've duly printed before. Bloomberg types up... Continue reading

16. The Audit

    “Something Doesn’t Have to Be Illegal to Be Wrong”

    April 20, 2010 09:04 PM

    Today I saw three major financial commentators make the point or something thereabouts that Wall Street's doesn't have to break the law to be unethical, immoral, and, thus, worth condemning. This is a critical point, especially since these guys (the... Continue reading

17. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Goldman Dig, Fox Biz Strikes, Super-Senior Slip-up

    April 20, 2010 08:52 PM

    Matthew Goldstein of Reuters digs out some interesting information on the Goldman scandal. He names Gail Kreitwoman as one of the Goldman employees interviewed by the SEC in its investigation: But in a lengthy legal filing submitted to... Continue reading

18. The Audit

    WSJ’s (Soon CNBC’s) Kelly Advances the Goldman Story

    April 20, 2010 06:52 PM

    Boy, losing Kate Kelly is a big blow to The Wall Street Journal. She's had a hand in a disproportionate number of the paper's best stories during the crisis. Now she's going to CNBC, which while not the proverbial... Continue reading

19. The Audit

    Apple’s Speech Policies Should Still Worry the Press

    April 20, 2010 12:19 PM

    Apple has asked Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoonist Mark Fiore to "resubmit" his iPhone/iPad application for approval, with Steve Jobs saying it was a "mistake." Of course it was, but this issue is still a serious problem for the press.... Continue reading

20. The Audit

    Audit Notes: SEC and Stanford, Goldman and Wells, Murdoch’s Personal Feuds

    April 19, 2010 08:33 PM

    You've got to love this SEC investigation. I mean, of the SEC, not by it. Talking Points Memo revisits an insector general's report out a few days ago and zeroes in on the news here: that Spencer Barasch,... Continue reading

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