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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged SEC

1. September 20, 2012 02:25 AM

   Audit Notes: high-frequency trading, Ann Arbor news, SEC access

   A whistleblower sparks a growing investigation, reports the WSJ

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Wall Street Journal has a good page-one story and scoop on a high-frequency trader turned whistleblower whose complaint has sparked a big investigation by regulators into whether exchanges are screwing small investors: He became convinced exchanges were providing such an edge after he says he was offered one himself when he ran a high-speed trading firm—a way to place...

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2. August 30, 2012 11:00 AM

   Audit Notes: Murdoch’s hacking scandal, revolving door, Obama’s AMA

   Two more arrests, including one for computer hacking

   By Ryan Chittum

   As Rupert Murdoch tells the world to go see Dinesh D'Souza's "scary" 2016 propaganda (read my 2010 takes on the kookiness that spawned the movie here and here), his News Corporation is back in the headlines for the hacking scandal. This time, it's from one of Murdoch's respectable papers, The Times of London, and it involves not phone hacking, but...

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3. 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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4. February 10, 2011 12:20 AM

   Audit Notes: Toxic Assets, Foreclosure Mills, SEC (Finally) Looking at CDOs

   By Ryan Chittum

   What ever happened to that pile of toxic assets that the banks were sitting on? Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Rapoport took a look at that the other day. But banks still hold plenty of the bad assets that once spooked investors: mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations and other risky instruments. Their potential impact concerns some accounting and banking observers....

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5. January 24, 2011 01:36 PM

   Resistance Is Futile for Alabama’s White Collar Criminals

   The Journal takes an excellent look at tough state regulator Joseph Borg

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Wall Street Journal has a superb Money & Investing profile this morning of an Alabama securities regulator who makes the feds look like pipsqueaks. Jean Eaglesham's lede is outstanding. How could you not want to read this story? Joseph Borg has never mounted his Kawasaki motorcycle in pursuit of a fraud figure. But Alabama's securities commissioner once sent investigators...

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6. March 9, 2011 01:00 AM

   The Times Ups the Ante on the SEC’s Madoff Mess

   By Ryan Chittum

   The New York Times has a great scoop this morning advancing the ball on the SEC's entanglement with Bernie Madoff. Remember a couple of weeks ago we found out that the SEC's top lawyer, David M. Becker, had inherited money from his mother's Madoff account. Madoff victims' trustee Irving Picard is suing to get $1.5 million in Ponzi profits back...

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7. May 4, 2011 12:28 PM

   The Regulators on the Bus

   A Times story shows the resources gap between regulators and Wall Street

   By Ryan Chittum

   We've wondered often just what it is that makes our financial regulators so toothless in the wake of the widespread fraud and chicanery that helped crash the financial system. This, reported in The New York Times this morning, obviously isn't the main problem, but it sure doesn't help: On a recent trip to New York to tour a trading floor,...

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8. January 12, 2011 01:19 PM

   The SEC’s Khuzami and That Citigroup Settlement

   An anonymous letter adds to questions about a wrist slap

   By Ryan Chittum

   Bloomberg News reported on Monday that the SEC's inspector general is investigating Robert Khuzami, its chief enforcement official, after getting an anonymous letter claiming that Khuzami watered down the agency's Citigroup enforcement effort after talking to a pal at the bank. Bloomberg: According to the letter, the SEC’s staff was prepared to file fraud claims against both individuals. Khuzami ordered...

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9. February 23, 2011 02:01 PM

   The SEC, Tangled Up in Madoff

   By Ryan Chittum

   How about that Irving Picard? The lawyer trying to recover cash for Bernie Madoff's victims had the nerve to sue Jamie Dimon's JPMorgan Chase for $6.4 billion, saying the bank was at the "very center" of Madoff's fraud and knew—or should have known—what was going on (it's worth revisiting a New York Times/Il Sole 24 Ore report from early 2009...

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10. January 20, 2012 02:31 PM

    Two Days, Two Good Investigations From Mollenkamp

    By Ryan Chittum

    Carrick Mollenkamp is getting his post-WSJ days off to quite the start. On Wednesday, he wrote, with Lauren Tara LaCapra and Matthew Goldstein, a tough Reuters story headlined "In MF Global, JPMorgan again at center of a financial failure." And yesterday ProPublica published a Mollenkamp investigation into Deutsche Bank's CDO desk, "Deutsche Analyst Sounded Alarm When Asked to Alter Numbers."...

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11. December 16, 2010 10:09 AM

    When Regulators Shrink, Press Responsibilities Rise

    Republicans signal intent to return to the status quo ante

    By Ryan Chittum

    The quasi re-regulation of finance is less than two years old, but it's already facing the rollback from leadership in a Republican House of Representatives hostile to the very idea and, not coincidentally, friendly with financial interests. A couple of reports out Monday illustrate the shifting winds, and these developments have implications for the press itself. Alabama Republican Spencer Bachus...

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