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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Wall Street

1. April 22, 2011 12:05 PM

   Follow the Money Leads On the Iowa AG

   While the press follows on a campaign-cash story

   By Ryan Chittum

   The National Institute on Money in State Politics's Follow The Money site reports on how campaign donations from the financial sector to Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller have skyrocketed since he took the lead role in the AGs' foreclosure fraud settlement. And "skyrocketed" is no hyperbole: Nearly half of the money Miller raised in 2010—$338,223 of $785,103—was donated after the...

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2. November 16, 2010 01:03 PM

   LAT Watchdogs Wall Street on the GM IPO

   The banks just can't help themselves, and if shares soar, political problems await.

   By Ryan Chittum

   The L.A. Times takes a smart tack on the General Motors IPO story, reporting that it shows how Wall Street is up to old tricks. The thing is, both GM and Wall Street owe their very existence to the taxpayers. We bailed them out, else they'd now both be relics. So you'd hope the Street might show a little more...

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3. February 3, 2011 12:04 PM

   WSJ on Harry Markopolos’ Whistleblowing Shell Companies

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Wall Street Journal has a very interesting scoop this morning on a lawsuit accusing banks of gouging pensioners and state governments on foreign-exchange trades. This lawsuit has whistleblowers, shell companies in Delaware formed to profit on the suits, and Harry Markopolos—of Shoulda Listened to Me About Madoff fame—is behind it all. California, Florida, Virginia, and Tennessee are investigating whether...

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4. March 23, 2011 06:11 AM

   WSJ: Federal Regulator Bares Fangs At Wall Street

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Wall Street Journal has a reports this morning that federal regulators are playing smashmouth with Wall Street over their toxic products, accusing them of "misrepresenting the risks of the bonds" and causing "the collapse of five institutions." I'll bet you can't guess which federal regulators. It's not the SEC nor the FDIC. It certainly isn't the OCC or OTS,...

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5. April 14, 2011 01:44 PM

   A Damning NYT Investigation Into Justice Wall Street Style

   Bankers skate as regulators and prosecutors protect financial interests above all else

   By Ryan Chittum

   The New York Times has the story of the week, a superb investigation into why there haven't been prosecutions on Wall Street. They find a clear pattern of government protecting financial interests over bringing people to justice. Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story get several big scoops here, all of which are eye-opening on why there has been no push to...

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6. August 26, 2011 06:51 PM

   A Good WSJ Scoop on AIG and Wall Street Research

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Wall Street Journal has an interesting scoop out today, reporting that AIG CEO Robert Benmosche is leaning on his counterparts whose analysts have issued negative research reports about the firm and who might want his business soon. The lede is great, pointing out the constraints that Wall Street analysts still face a decade after Eliot Spitzer tried to drain...

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7. May 19, 2011 07:43 PM

   A HuffPost Scoop, Overlooked By the Mainstream Press

   HUD finds big banks defrauded taxpayers, but few follow the story

   By Ryan Chittum

   Shahien Nasiripour scored a foreclosure-fraud scandal scoop for The Huffington Post on Monday, reporting that audits of the mortgage industry conducted by HUD's inspector general found five giant banks—Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial—defrauded taxpayers and violated the False Claims Act. HUD sent the findings to the Justice Department, which will now have to decide...

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8. December 8, 2010 09:19 AM

   Andrew Ross Sorkin: Fraud Triggered the Financial Crisis

   A more important statement than you might think from the NYT's Wall Street guy

   By Ryan Chittum

   There was a tough column in The New York Times yesterday on how the feds' are going after the minnows and avoiding the sharks over the financial crisis. That the piece comes from Andrew Ross Sorkin, who's about as inside as they come on Wall Street (for better or for worse), I think is significant. First, Sorkin punctures Attorney General...

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9. March 31, 2011 07:57 PM

   Audit Notes: Bloomberg on the Fed, OCC Meddles for Banks, Who Runs the World

   By Ryan Chittum

   Bloomberg News is flooding the zone on the Fed's discount-window document dump, which the central bank had to disclose after Bloomberg sued it and won. Here are a few of its stories so far: Goldman Sachs Borrowed From Fed Window Five Times That contradicts testimony from CFO Gary Cohn, who also borrowed out of patriotic duty (emphasis mine): Goldman Sachs...

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10. November 17, 2010 06:21 PM

    Audit Notes: Catching Up With Wall Street, Princess Dresses, Olbermann and Objectivity

    By Ryan Chittum

    The New York Observer's Max Abelson takes a look at the Wall Street people who nearly crashed the world. Where are they now? Mostly still on Wall Street; many in the same jobs. Howzat? Abelson ledes with this eye-raising quote from Dick Parsons of Citigroup: "Have you ever noticed," the chairman of Citigroup, Richard D. Parsons, asked The Observer this...

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11. May 30, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: Facebook IPO edition

    Why the flop matters

    By Ryan Chittum

    Joe Nocera glosses over the problem with Facebook's IPO in arguing that we shouldn't care whether its shares plunged after they started trading. But let’s be honest. Were there really any long-term investors in Facebook that first day? Judging by the torrent of criticism that has rained on Facebook and Morgan Stanley, it sure doesn’t appear that way. Instead, what...

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12. November 12, 2010 03:29 PM

    Audit Notes: Free Trade “Hit,” Taxing Wall Street, Bruce Karatz v. Tron Carter

    By Ryan Chittum

    One thing the financial press doesn't much pretend to be neutral about is "free trade." They love that stuff. See for instance, this Wall Street Journal headline this morning: U.S. Hit By Trade Setback See, some of us—most of us!—don't think the U.S. got "hit" by any "setback" by not making a free-trade pact with South Korea. We always seem...

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13. April 15, 2011 12:54 AM

    Audit Notes: HuffPo Shines, Libor Lineup, An FT Slip

    By Ryan Chittum

    I don't know about you, but the best news story I read today on the Levin-Coburn Report wasn't in the Journal or the Times, Bloomberg or Reuters. It was by William Alden and Shahien Nasiripour in The Huffington Post. It's a clear presentation of the report's findings on Goldman Sachs, led by the fact that Senator Levin wants to refer...

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14. December 17, 2010 06:05 PM

    Audit Notes: Inequality in NYC, Reuters on Dumb Money, Ireland

    By Ryan Chittum

    Yves Smith, in a "Banana Republic Watch," points to a report (PDF) from the Fiscal Policy Institute that finds inequality in New York City is worse than that in all but fifteen countries. Since 1980, the share of income in New York City going to the top 1 percent has gone from 12 percent to 47 percent. More: There are...

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15. May 23, 2011 08:19 PM

    Audit Notes: Investigators Eye the Wall Street Mortgage Machine

    By Ryan Chittum

    After years of going nowhere, the investigation of the Wall Street securitization machine behind the financial crisis is finally showing some promise, with probes in New York and California ramping up and even the federales getting into the act. The Department of Justice preparing to hit Goldman Sachs with subpoenas, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The Journal reports...

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16. February 3, 2011 07:45 PM

    Audit Notes: It’s Wall Street’s Deficit, Dimon Steps In It, Red-Faced Mortgage Bankers

    By Ryan Chittum

    Simon Johnson looks at the "Ruinous Fiscal Impact of Big Banks" over at The New York Times's Economix blog: First, if you regulate us, we’ll move to other countries. And second, the public policy priority should not be banks but rather the spending cuts needed to get budget deficits under control in the United States, Britain and other industrialized countries....

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17. November 8, 2010 05:25 PM

    Audit Notes: Palin Holds Forth on QE2, Top 400 Taxes, Too Big to Jail

    By Ryan Chittum

    If you, like me, had been eagerly awaiting Sarah Palin's thoughts on Quantitative Easing: Part Deux, the wait is over! All this pump priming will come at a serious price. And I mean that literally: everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them...

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18. June 8, 2011 07:46 PM

    Audit Notes: Poor Wall Street, Our Lost Decade, Parallel Universe

    By Ryan Chittum

    Reading this Wall Street Journal story, you'd think that Wall Street had fallen on hard times: Morgan Stanley offered a glimpse into Wall Street's future, and the outlook has changed so much from the heady days of the past that the firm is planning to keep a close watch on BlackBerry usage. New cost-cutting moves were the focus of a...

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19. April 18, 2011 08:30 PM

    Audit Notes: Pulitzer Edition

    By Ryan Chittum

    The financial crisis is now more than three years old, but up to now there had been no Pulitzer Prize awarded for reporting on how Wall Street's crucial role in creating the financial crisis. Now there has. ProPublica's Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein won a much-deserved Pulitzer for National Reporting for their series on The Wall Street Money Machine, which...

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20. May 27, 2011 08:07 PM

    Audit Notes: Saudis Blame Wall Street, Made in the U.S., Victims’ Big Haircut

    By Ryan Chittum

    This is very interesting: Kevin G. Hall of McClatchy reports on some Wikileaks cables that show the Saudis telling the Bush administration in 2008 that speculators were to blame for the megaspike in oil prices. Prince Abdulazziz was "extremely worried" that high prices would destroy the demand for oil, according to the May 7, 2008, account of his meeting with...

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