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Articles by Ryan Chittum | Email the Author

 

1. The Audit

   USA Today Hits the Overdraft Racket Hard

   July 9, 2009 03:03 PM

   USA Today has a superb story this morning that latches onto the overdraft-charges story and takes it into new territory. The paper's Kathy Chu gets a hold of some industry internal memos that confirm how it thinks about this... Continue reading

2. The Audit

   Guardian’s Big Scoop on Scandal at News Corp. Tab

   July 8, 2009 08:56 PM

   The Guardian unloaded a big-time scoop today that News Corp. paid more than $1.6 million to settle phone-hacking cases by its journalists in order to prevent further damage of their "repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods" from... Continue reading

3. The Audit

   Reuters: Bureaucrats Fighting Consumer Agency to Protect Turf

   July 8, 2009 03:29 PM

   Getting a Consumer Financial Protection Agency passed is going to be hard enough, given how the still-extremely-powerful banking industry has vowed to fight it to the death. Now, Reuters reports that other regulators are trying to smother the... Continue reading

4. The Audit

   The LA Times’s Incomplete Swipe at Credit Cards

   July 8, 2009 09:54 AM

   The LA Times columnist David Lazarus reports this morning that credit-card companies are doing an "end run" around impending regulation by changing the way they charge interest rates. Lazarus finds Chase and Bank of America informing their customers that... Continue reading

5. The Audit

   A Code Theft at Goldman Is a Tantalizing Story

   July 7, 2009 03:46 PM

   Reuters' Matthew Goldstein broke a fascinating story on Sunday, reporting that a Goldman Sachs computer programmer stole at least part of the code the investment bank uses for its so-called program trading. Sergey Aleynikov, a Russian immigrant who's a... Continue reading

6. The Audit

   The WSJ Gives Its Well-Off Readers a Glimpse of Poverty

   July 7, 2009 10:43 AM

   It may seem obvious, but not everybody gets that increasing government safety nets during a downturn pumps money directly into the economy. So it's good to see a smallish story in The Wall Street Journal spelling it out for... Continue reading

7. The Audit

   The FT Finds Wall Street Up to Its Old Tricks

   July 6, 2009 07:41 PM

   The Financial Times led its front page with a major story today on the return of those dread words "financial innovation." If regulators and Congress aren't perking up after reading this story, they're as good as dead (the Senate... Continue reading

8. The Audit

   The AP Is Too Optimistic on Obama’s Too Big To Fail Plans

   July 6, 2009 02:03 PM

   The Associated Press looks at Obama's regulatory-reform plan and finds reason for hope on its approach to tackling Too Big to Fail. Up to now the consensus is that the administration's approach has been to do a whole... Continue reading

9. The Audit

   Miami Herald Finds Florida Fudged for Stanford

   July 6, 2009 09:44 AM

   The Miami Herald has a great investigation on the Allen Stanford scandal, reporting that a Florida regulator allowed the conman to set up an office to sell certificates of deposit with no regulatory supervision. Lucy Komisar, Michael Sallah, and... Continue reading

10. The Audit

    Amplifying the Drumbeat on the “Overdraft Protection” Racket

    July 2, 2009 05:48 PM

    It's The New York Times turn to do a nice story on "overdraft protection" practices. The Journal had one yesterday and the Washington Post did this weekend. Today, Felix Salmon of Reuters picks up the ball and<a... Continue reading

11. The Audit

    Journal: Wall Street Pay Could Set Records

    July 2, 2009 09:36 AM

    That didn't take long. The Journal reports this morning that Wall Street compensation is on track to possibly outdo 2007 levels. The paper doesn't explicitly say it, but that would set an all-time record. Goldman Sachs employees are on... Continue reading

12. The Audit

    WSJ Shows How Personal-Finance Pieces Ought to Be Done

    July 1, 2009 05:21 PM

    It's rare to read a genuinely good personal-finance story, so I was glad to see Karen Blumenthal's column in The Wall Street Journal today take a hard look at how banks aid scam artists. Blumenthal's relative was getting involved... Continue reading

13. The Audit

    NYT: Banks Gearing Up to Kill New Consumer-Protection Agency

    July 1, 2009 02:57 PM

    Continuing the theme of the press focusing on the lobbying efforts of the financial industry to keep the status quo, The New York Times reports today that the banks are gearing up to fight the new consumer financial-protection agency—hard.... Continue reading

14. The Audit

    ProPublica, Post Watchdog Senator’s TARP Meddling

    July 1, 2009 09:33 AM

    ProPublica and the Washington Post are making a nice little team this week. On Monday they wrote about how General Electric lobbied its way into billions of dollars in bailout money—without suffering the regulatory consequences. Today they report... Continue reading

15. The Audit

    NY Times Chugs the Dr Pepper

    June 30, 2009 02:23 PM

    How can The New York Times be this gullible? The paper writes about Dr Pepper Snapple outsourcing its information technology to an Indian company but somehow comes up with the idea that this will (or, weasel word: "may") result... Continue reading

16. The Audit

    LAT Raises the “Nexus” Sales-Tax Issue

    June 30, 2009 09:57 AM

    The LA Times has an interesting article today on an overlooked aspect of tax policy: The "nexus" exemption for Internet and catalog retailers. It focuses on Amazon's threats to remove an affiliate program that several states are using to... Continue reading

17. The Audit

    ProPublica, the Post Bring GE Into the Light

    June 29, 2009 05:28 PM

    Props to ProPublica and the Washington Post for a joint story on how General Electric has benefited from $74 billion in bailouts in the form of guarantees on its debt—without being subject to the normal level of regulation for... Continue reading

18. The Audit

    LA Times Soft-Pedals Wired Editor’s Plagiarism

    June 29, 2009 03:13 PM

    It's bad enough to write a two-source story about plagiarism. It's worse when the two sources are the plagiarist and a defender. But that's what the Los Angeles Times does in its piece on Chris Anderson's new book Free:... Continue reading

19. The Audit

    NYT Listens in as the Mortgage-Mod Plan Hits a Wall

    June 29, 2009 09:43 AM

    The New York Times descends into customer-service hell on A1 today, reporting on the effort to modify mortgages under the Obama foreclosure plan. Reporter Peter S. Goodman spent two days listening in on calls at a mortgage-modification company to... Continue reading

20. The Audit

    A Community Reinvestment Act Reader

    June 26, 2009 05:27 PM

    Felix Salmon takes John Carney of Clusterstock to task for latching on to the right-wing effort to blame the housing bubble and financial crisis (or at least a good part of it) on the Community Reinvestment Act, a law... Continue reading

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