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Articles by Ryan Chittum | Email the Author

 

1. The Audit

   Deficit Reduction and Windfall Taxes

   December 17, 2009 10:44 AM

   There a number of reasons for instituting a windfall tax on bankers, and they've been most ably spelled out by the Financial Times's Martin Wolf in a November column. While there are plenty of moral reasons, the primary (non-political)... Continue reading

2. The Audit

   Wednesday Links: SEC and CDOs, Meyerson, Wasted Crisis

   December 16, 2009 06:49 PM

   Here's more ammo for the just-blow-up-the-SEC-and-start-again crowd: NPR's Planet Money and ProPublica report on a questionnaire sent to CDO market participants known as collateral managers by the SEC asking "basic questions about what happened." Securities experts say the letter... Continue reading

3. The Audit

   WaPo on (Another) U.S. Giveaway to Citi

   December 16, 2009 03:44 PM

   (UPDATE: I originally said in the headline and lede that the Post had a scoop here. That's not right. The Journal wrote about the tax break the day before, but buried it in the fifteenth and sixteenth paragraphs.) The... Continue reading

4. The Audit

   Bloomberg Tough on Too Big to Fail

   December 16, 2009 10:24 AM

   Bloomberg takes a good look at the fading chance to anything meaningful to reform the financial system, noting that "Two years after the start of the deepest recession since the 1930s, no U.S. or European authority has put in... Continue reading

5. The Audit

   WSJ Excels on Retirement Risk for Execs, Employees

   December 15, 2009 10:47 AM

   I love this Wall Street Journal story this morning on how CEOs, despite their rich paydays, often get automatic gains on their retirement plans, while their proles face the whims of the markets. This is really solid reporting. You... Continue reading

6. The Audit

   Monday Links: Banks Winning, Volcker’s ATM, TARP Paybacks

   December 14, 2009 06:23 PM

   This is a really solid Bloomberg story on lobbying and how the bank lobby has really won, even if new regulations are passed. This is called putting things in proper perspective: Still, the firms that helped precipitate the worst... Continue reading

7. The Audit

   Mark Pittman, In His Own Words, On Camera

   December 14, 2009 03:12 PM

   You've read quite a bit by the late Mark Pittman of Bloomberg. You've read quite a bit about him here at The Audit, where we thought he was one of the... Continue reading

8. The Audit

   Carr on the Journal’s News Pages Moving Right

   December 14, 2009 10:22 AM

   David Carr has a good column about the rightward tilt of Murdoch's The Wall Street Journal, which before he took over was about as neutral a newspaper as you could find. Carr writes that "there are growing indications that... Continue reading

9. The Audit

   Friday Links: Goldman and AIG, Bernie’s Life, Why a Windfall

   December 11, 2009 10:57 PM

   The Wall Street Journal has a major story tonight, presumably slated for page one of tomorrow's paper, showing that Goldman Sachs (an Audit funder) had a "a bigger role than has been publicly disclosed in fueling the mortgage bets... Continue reading

10. The Audit

    Early Results from the Newsday Paywall

    December 11, 2009 06:02 PM

    It's no surprise that Newsday's Web traffic declined after it put up a paywall. What is surprising is how it declined. Unique visitors declined just 21 percent from October (the paywall went up October 28) to November, according to... Continue reading

11. The Audit

    WSJ Follows the Loopholes on Regulation Bill

    December 11, 2009 05:21 PM

    The Journal found a good angle for its curtain-raising story on the House financial-regulation vote today. The paper digs into the fine print of the bill and looks at the treats buried there for favored lobbies. It finds carve-outs... Continue reading

12. The Audit

    Overplaying Goldman’s Bonus Move

    December 11, 2009 10:28 AM

    Goldman Sachs (an Audit funder) is making some baby steps on pay, but the press way overplays what is essentially a PR move. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times both slap the news on A1, with the... Continue reading

13. The Audit

    Thursday Links: Sorkin, Rosie, Ginnie Mae

    December 10, 2009 05:27 PM

    Andrew Ross Sorkin sounds better notes on The Daily Show than he does in most of his own columns. "The hardest part is that we haven't had accountability, and the ethos, "the greed is still good"—that is still there, that... Continue reading

14. The Audit

    McClatchy Takes on the SEC’s “Too Big to Punish”

    December 10, 2009 04:42 PM

    McClatchy continues its fine recent watchdog work with a package looking at the SEC's slap-on-the-wrist regime. It's a smart new angle on the too-big-to-fail problem—as it says in the lede of the main story, "In the eyes of federal... Continue reading

15. The Audit

    The UK Windfall-Tax Bombshell’s Second Day

    December 10, 2009 10:32 AM

    The Wall Street Journal and New York Times go A1 with second-day(ish) stories on Britain's bold bid to slap a 50 percent windfall tax on banker bonuses. And this morning, the Financial Times reports that France... Continue reading

16. The Audit

    Wednesday Links: Lost Docs, No-Bid Bonds, Ex-Im

    December 9, 2009 06:35 PM

    ProPublica pushes back against the idea, furthered by a recent New York Times column, that the administration's loan-modification program is failing in large part because borrowers just aren't submitting documents. Paul Kiel raises the very good point out... Continue reading

17. The Audit

    The FT’s Wolf Highlights the Chinese Problem

    December 9, 2009 03:42 PM

    The Financial Times's Martin Wolf zeroes in on one of the critical economic problems that led to the credit crisis (among other things), but hasn't been touched since: China's tampering with its currency, the renminbi. Wolf presents the case... Continue reading

18. The Audit

    The UK Windfall-Taxes Its Bankers

    December 9, 2009 10:15 AM

    The big news of the day, by our lights, comes from across the pond, where British regulators continue to outclass their American counterparts by actually bringing some pain to the bankers, rather than quivering in fear of upsetting them. The... Continue reading

19. The Audit

    Tuesday Links: Pay Matters, Tablet Econ, Windfall Tax, TBTF

    December 8, 2009 05:11 PM

    This is a must-read Financial Times column from a few days ago on why compensation really is an important issue and has been misplayed by parts of the media: According to standard narrative, the meltdown of Bear Stearns and... Continue reading

20. The Audit

    Reuters Overpromises, Underdelivers on New “Crisis”

    December 8, 2009 02:58 PM

    Here's a Reuters story that could desperately use some of that long-form, enterprise reporting the wire service says it's going to be doing more. The headline is certainly an attention-grabber: Crisis in sovereign, commercial debt seen But the... Continue reading

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