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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged bubble

1. March 5, 2012 05:41 PM

   WSJ on the Return of the Online Pet Food Store

   By Ryan Chittum

   I like this smart Wall Street Journal piece on the new economics of the Web as told through the effort to build a "Pets.com 2.0." Pets.com, of course, came to symbolize the mania of the Tech Wreck with a we'll-make-money-later business model based, implausibly, on spending millions on sock puppet ads so the company could lose money shipping forty-pound bags...

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2. November 10, 2010 04:13 PM

   Audit Notes: WSJ Explains Ireland, Eisinger, Tragedy of the Technocrats

   By Ryan Chittum

   Every once in a while, we get one of those page-one stories in The Wall Street Journal that remind you of the pre-Murdoch paper. It's like bumping into an old friend or something. Today's Ireland leder is a good example of that. Its high-quality explanatory journalism that gives the American reader a very well written, sober examination of how Ireland's...

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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, 2010 04:40 PM

   Audit Notes: Derailed; Tax Know-Nothings, Press Bubble, Etc.

   By Ryan Chittum

   John Collins Rudolf writes at The New York Times's Green blog about the effect Tuesday's GOP landslide will have on the country's pitiful high-speed rail efforts. Wisconsin Governor-elect Scott Walker promises, as he did in the campaign, that he'll turn down free federal money for a high-speed rail project in his state, a dumb move the LaCrosse Tribune points out...

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5. June 20, 2012 01:55 AM

   Audit Notes: Echoes of the 1930s, gilded bubble, access journalism

   As Greece crumbles, extremism and violence rises

   By Ryan Chittum

   On the echoes of the 1930s tip, the University of Athens's Aristides Hatzis writes in the Financial Times: Despite the narrow victory of a centrist party in Sunday’s vote, almost every day extremist violence breaks out in Athens and beyond. Neo-nazis against immigrants, anarchists and leftists. Anarchists, ultra-leftists and other fringe groups of the nationalist-populist camp against riot police, mainstream...

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6. May 21, 2012 05:03 PM

   Audit Notes: Facebook IPO edition

   By Ryan Chittum

   I'm happy to say I was wrong (and Felix was right) in guessing that retail investors would jump into Facebook shares and push it significantly higher. The stock stayed even on Friday only with the massive support of its underwriters, and it plunged 11 percent today. What happened? The company was overpriced, as many press stories suggested, and Facebook and...

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7. November 23, 2012 06:50 AM

   Audit Notes: not Fortune tellers; Foursquare, two million; Big Ten

   The magazine's picks for future Apple and Microsoft CEOs go awry immediately

   By Ryan Chittum

   Fortune peered into its crystal ball for the October 29 issue and came up with four "best bets" on who's in line to replace four tech CEOs, presumably years down the road (although it's a wonder how Steve Ballmer continues to hang on at Microsoft). The mag's top picks: iPhone chief Scott Forstall at Apple and Windows honcho Steven Sinofsky...

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8. December 13, 2010 08:17 PM

   Audit Notes: Risky Business, Two Economies, Google and Monopoly

   By Ryan Chittum

   The New York Times is good to keep an eye on signs of a return of risky lending. Today it looks at signs that the moribund credit-card industry is stirring again, which could be worrisome on a number of levels like getting more people into more debt and possible bubble behavior as a result of the Fed's monetary policies. But...

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9. March 24, 2011 05:42 PM

   Better to Be Skeptical Than Sanguine About Soaring Tech Valuations (UPDATED)

   By Ryan Chittum

   Henry Blodget's Business Insider runs a column today from a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist arguing that there's no new Web bubble. Blodget says on Twitter: "Anyone who disagrees, please refute logic. Don't just huff and snort." Well, okay. Here's what the VC, Ben Horowitz, says is his reason No. 1 why there's no new tech bubble: In the great...

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10. October 11, 2011 01:30 PM

    The China Bubble

    WSJ, Reuters, and Bloomberg reports show why a reckoning is likely

    By Ryan Chittum

    We've all heard about the crisis in Europe, how it's weighing on the economy, and how a collapse there could make the 2008 crisis look tame in comparison. But a few eye-catching press reports have been raising serious questions about China. It's clear that the country has an enormous debt bubble--one created on purpose (at least in part) to get...

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11. May 17, 2012 11:00 AM

    The Facebook frenzy

    Retail investors prepare to jump on a richly valued IPO

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Wall Street Journal's page-one Facebook IPO story does a good job of capturing some uncomfortable parallels to the dot.com bubble. The Journal profiles three investors to give us a feel for how people are thinking about the most buzzed about IPO since Google. The headline on the story tells us that, "In Facebook IPO, Frenzy, Skepticism." But the story...

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12. February 9, 2011 11:05 PM

    The Twitter, Facebook, Groupon, Huffington Post Bubble

    By Ryan Chittum

    Still think there's not a Web 2.0 bubble going on? The Wall Street Journal reports tonight that Twitter is now valued at between $8 billion and $10 billion. Twitter is the massively popular communication network that doesn't have a business model, loses money, and has almost no revenue Sound familiar? The Journal reports Twitter had $45 million of revenue last...

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13. August 24, 2012 06:50 AM

    WaPo dings the ‘give-it-away-free approach’

    A mess of a story on Facebook

    By Ryan Chittum

    There's all kinds of irony about the Washington Post slapping a company for a "give-it-away-free approach" that has hurt share prices. There's the fact that the WaPo once had an option to buy 10 percent of this extremely valuable firm—a stake that would have had a return of 160,000 percent in seven years—but it gave it away free. There's the...

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