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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Jonathan Weil

1. May 26, 2011 07:54 PM

   Audit Notes: Bloomberg Blues, Weil Audits Goldman’s Board, Does Not Compute

   By Ryan Chittum

   Slate's Jack Shafer shreds Bloomberg View, the new Bloomberg editorial page. He writes, "I'd rather go blind than look at a world made whole through the Bloomberg View," with its ideology emulating that of the heroic cult leader Mayor Mike, whose "political values are as unmappable as a hooker's love." Nice. This is good stuff, too: Among the columnists' first...

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2. December 15, 2011 06:46 PM

   Audit Notes: Bloomberg Empire Edition

   By Ryan Chittum

   Reuters's Jack Shafer writes that Bloomberg BusinessWeek has become the best magazine in the country, his "primary source of long-form, print journalism": Who would have thought that “Bloomberg” and “BusinessWeek,” the two most plodding names in the history of journalism, could merge to create a superb general interest magazine? I’m not saying that every issue is a treat, but nearly...

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3. September 14, 2012 06:50 AM

   Audit Notes: Bloomberg eyes CMBS, newspaper optimism, Weil on bank books

   Signs of froth return to commercial real estate lending

   By Ryan Chittum

   Bloomberg News is good to keep an eye on the securitization market for early signs of froth. It reports that mortgage-backed securities in commercial real estate are raising red flags again: Buyers are gravitating toward the debt even as lenders include risker loans in new offerings. Citigroup and Goldman Sachs sold about $1 billion of securities that include a $100...

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4. November 4, 2011 07:38 PM

   Audit Notes: Citi’s Slaps, College Is Cheap, Voicemail Interception Compensation Scheme

   By Ryan Chittum

   Bloomberg's Jonathan Weil has an excellent, tough column on the latest settlement between Citigroup and the SEC, which shows how "Citigroup Finds Obeying the Law Is Too Darn Hard": Five times since 2003 the Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Citigroup Inc. (C)’s main broker-dealer subsidiary of securities fraud. On each occasion the company’s SEC settlements have followed a familiar...

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5. April 20, 2012 02:18 AM

   Audit Notes: Luskin and Krugman, Bailouts, Minimum Wage,

   By Ryan Chittum

   Brad DeLong catches Donald Luskin in a doozy. Luskin calls out Paul Krugman for saying in 2000 that the Dow Jones was overvalued but that the Nasdaq was not. Only that's not really what Krugman said. Here's Luskin: In late February 2000, two weeks before the peak of the dot-com stock bubble at Nasdaq 5,000, Krugman wrote in his Times...

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6. February 10, 2011 08:56 PM

   Audit Notes: NFL Hell, No Inflation Here, Fraud Without Fraudsters

   By Ryan Chittum

   Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post has the column of the week, a righteous piece of outrage at the NFL and what it says about our society. I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in Jerry World. In Jerry World, a $1.15 billion stadium looks like the Taj Mahal on the outside, but inside some of...

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7. May 12, 2011 08:35 PM

   Audit Notes: Slick Politics, Greece’s Red Flag, What Caused Oil’s Tumble?

   By Ryan Chittum

   I noted a Huffington Post story the other day reporting that removing drilling bans wouldn't really affect the price of gas in the U.S. So it's also worth noting, as ProPublica does today, that removing the $4 billion tax subsidies for oil companies wouldn't affect gas prices much, either. “The impact would be extremely small,” said Stephen Brown, a professor...

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8. June 10, 2011 07:08 PM

   Bloomberg’s Weil Exposes Another Accounting Regulator Coverup

   By Ryan Chittum

   Jonathan Weil has a tough Bloomberg View column about accounting regulators covering up wrongdoing by companies and their auditors. Back in 2006, KPMG let Motorola book a sale in the third quarter. That helped Motorola because without it, the company would have missed earnings estimates and sent its shares tumbling. But the sale happened on the first day of the...

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9. January 28, 2011 01:35 PM

   Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission FAIL

   Mostly lackluster coverage of a lackluster report

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission released its report yesterday and the press play indicates that it's either an utter failure or that the press itself has some real questions to answer. I'm going to say it's the former. The Wall Street Journal puts it on A4, and puts it sixth in its Business & Finance column of top news briefs,...

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10. September 8, 2012 02:38 AM

    The Facebook blame game

    The NYT's Sorkin shifts focus from the bankers

    By Ryan Chittum

    Like Jon Weil, I've got little sympathy for the folks who speculated on Facebook at $38, thinking it would double in price on day one but who instead three months later are sitting on 50 percent losses. Buying a stock priced at 100 times earnings in a company whose revenue growth is slowing sharply, whose costs are growing even more...

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11. December 9, 2010 10:20 AM

    The Obama Administration’s Financial-Fraud Stunt Backfires

    The press shows the feds' numbers are phony and asks where the whales are.

    By Ryan Chittum

    Boy, the Obama administration's slapdash PR effort to show it's cracking down on financial fraud sure looks to be failing—and getting some serious blowback. Jesse Eisinger has a column in today's New York Times noting that the feds' insider-trading investigation, while important, misses the bigger issue: prosecuting those who caused the crisis. The New York Times's Andrew Ross Sorkin called...

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12. November 8, 2011 03:14 PM

    The SEC’s Soft Touch For Repeat Offenders

    NYT and Bloomberg show how often banks violate promises not to re-commit fraud

    By Ryan Chittum

    Bloomberg's Jonathan Weil wrote a swell column last week on the SEC's latest Citigroup wrist-slap. Weil noted that one of the terms of the settlement was that Citi not violate the law again and reported that it was the fifth time in eight years that the same Citi subsidiary had settled with the SEC for violating the same law, each...

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