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Articles by Ryan Chittum | Email the Author

 

1. The Audit

   Mark-to-Market and the Last Honest Man

   April 2, 2009 08:55 AM

   Jonathan Weil over at Bloomberg finds a great way to illustrate the see-no-evil-hear-no-evil policy being instituted by the accounting-standards board FASB to make banks look healthier. Charles Bowsher, who chaired the Federal Home Loan Bank System's Office of... Continue reading

2. The Audit

   “Too Big to Fail”: The Debate

   April 1, 2009 06:40 PM

   Felix Salmon (over at his new digs at Reuters) and Kevin Drum of Mother Jones are having a back-and-forth over putting a cap on bank size, a longtime hobbyhorse of mine. Drum raises some good questions on... Continue reading

3. The Audit

   Accounting Funny Business

   April 1, 2009 05:48 PM

   A reader emails to point out a good Slate column from the 2002 era of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Global Crossing, etc. Now we have "mark-to-management" accounting endorsed by our official accounting-standards board by way of Congress by way of their... Continue reading

4. The Audit

   Journal Good on FASB but Should Be Better

   April 1, 2009 02:15 PM

   The Journal is good today in showing how the proposed new rule gutting mark-to-market accounting would be counterproductive to healing the banking industry—but not as good as it could be or as it would have been pre-Murdoch. Mark-to-market means... Continue reading

5. The Audit

   Failing on “Too Big to Fail”

   April 1, 2009 09:06 AM

   The Journal, Bloomberg, and Reuters have stories on a Fed president, Gary Stern, saying the government is to blame for failing to prevent the "too big to fail" scenario. The WSJ frustrates me to no end by headlining its... Continue reading

6. The Audit

   Fresno Bee On the Ground with the New Joads

   March 31, 2009 02:03 PM

   The Fresno Bee goes to the "unemployment capital of California" and returns with some stark imagery, scenes that conjure the Great Depression. This is Grapes of Wrath-like stuff, with 41 percent unemployment and fieldhands idled as farmland goes fallow.... Continue reading

7. The Audit

   Boston Globe Is Excellent on Pension Insurer’s Bad Bets

   March 31, 2009 11:11 AM

   Yesterday, The Boston Globe unloosed a superb piece of accountability reporting, writing that the Bush administration decided to move* the assets of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation heavily into stocks last year in what can be only described as... Continue reading

8. The Audit

   BusinessWeek: Unemployment’s Worse Than You Think

   March 31, 2009 08:48 AM

   BusinessWeek runs a nice story looking at the unreliability of unemployment statistics and how they're underestimating actual unemployment—something I criticized the Journal for ignoring yesterday. Because the methods to gather unemployment haven't kept pace with changes in the... Continue reading

9. The Audit

   Thinning Out the Journal’s Front Page

   March 30, 2009 11:19 PM

   This Wall Street Journal A1 story today takes a rubbery strand of data about consumer borrowing and stretches it past the breaking point. The paper says consumer-loan balances are rising in "many" midsized cities, evidence, apparently, that these lucky... Continue reading

10. The Audit

    The Journal Games Out Depression Scenarios

    March 30, 2009 01:52 PM

    I like this Wall Street Journal piece today looking at the odds of entering a depression, what that would mean, and what it would look like. I think we need more of this forward-looking stuff asking where we might... Continue reading

11. The Audit

    Bloomberg on Papering Over Banks’ Losses

    March 30, 2009 09:18 AM

    Bloomberg reports that the proposed changes to mark-to-market accounting rules could boost paper profits at banks by 20 percent. Hey, if your business sucks, rewrite the accounting rules et voila! "Profit" magically appears. Mark-to-market forces banks to "mark" the... Continue reading

12. The Audit

    NYT: Heads They Win, Tails They Win a Bit Less

    March 27, 2009 02:26 PM

    The Times looks at a piece of the unaccountability culture in corporate America: Changing stock-option strike prices (legally) to make them less underwater. The lede: Employee pay is often tied to a company’s fortune — until things turn sour.... Continue reading

13. The Audit

    Just What’s Left in the Metro Dailies?

    March 27, 2009 01:17 PM

    NYU prof and Press Thinker Jay Rosen has had it with what he calls "replaceniks"—those who throw out the red herring of people saying bloggers will replace newspaper journalists, an assertion that's rarely backed up with a quote of... Continue reading

14. The Audit

    WaPo Scoop Shows Government’s Bailout Conflicts

    March 27, 2009 11:44 AM

    The Washington Post fronts a pretty big scoop on friction at Freddie Mac caused by its untenable straddling between responsibility to private investors and accountability to its government masters (I know, I know—this is not a new thing. But... Continue reading

15. The Audit

    Journal’s Good Effort on the Immigration Backlash

    March 27, 2009 09:05 AM

    The Wall Street Journal has a really good story today on the government discouraging companies from hiring foreign workers. First of all, it's news. I've seen part of this, but the Journal is smart to piece together what looks... Continue reading

16. The Audit

    Milwaukee J-S Exposes Criminals in the Mortgage Biz

    March 26, 2009 05:22 PM

    Late last year I did a Q&A with The Miami Herald's Jack Dolan, who led a team that wrote an excellent series exposing how Florida's licensing authorities let convicted felons run amok through the state's mortgage industry. I was... Continue reading

17. The Audit

    NYT Sues Fed and Treasury

    March 26, 2009 01:44 PM

    A tip of the hat to The New York Times for filing a lawsuit against the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department for stalling on its Freedom of Information Act requests. The paper's Jo Becker and Tim O'Brien filed... Continue reading

18. The Audit

    The “Other” Post Gets a Great Scoop

    March 26, 2009 09:40 AM

    The New York Post yesterday reported that Citigroup and Bank of America, those two enormous welfare cases teetering under the weight of their toxic assets, are in the market snapping up more of them. Both Citi and BofA... Continue reading

19. The Audit

    Journal Inside the AIG Wagon-Circling

    March 26, 2009 08:51 AM

    The WSJ has a good story today with lots of detail about what's going on inside AIG's now-infamous Financial Products group. The story jumps off a remarkably self-righteous op-ed in the Times yesterday by AIG-FP executive Jake DeSantis,... Continue reading

20. The Audit

    The WSJ and the Limits of a “No Jumps” Policy

    March 25, 2009 10:49 AM

    We've talked quite a bit about the FT-ization of the Journal since Murdoch got his grubby paws on it, shoved out Marcus Brauchli (who tried to stop Rupe's myopic moves), and installed his boy Robert Thomson. One of... Continue reading

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