The Audit

The WSJ Gives Its Well-Off Readers a Glimpse of Poverty

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 7, 2009 at 10:43 AM

It may seem obvious, but not everybody gets that increasing government safety nets during a downturn pumps money directly into... More

The FT Finds Wall Street Up to Its Old Tricks

And dog bites man, but it’s still important news

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 6, 2009 at 07:41 PM

The Financial Times led its front page with a major story today on the return of those dread words "financial... More

The AP Is Too Optimistic on Obama’s Too Big To Fail Plans

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 6, 2009 at 02:03 PM

The Associated Press looks at Obama's regulatory-reform plan and finds reason for hope on its approach to tackling Too Big... More

Miami Herald Finds Florida Fudged for Stanford

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 6, 2009 at 09:44 AM

The Miami Herald has a great investigation on the Allen Stanford scandal, reporting that a Florida regulator allowed the conman... More

Amplifying the Drumbeat on the “Overdraft Protection” Racket

The issue picks up momentum in the financial press

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 2, 2009 at 05:48 PM

It's The New York Times turn to do a nice story on "overdraft protection" practices. The Journal had one yesterday... More

Journal: Wall Street Pay Could Set Records

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 2, 2009 at 09:36 AM

That didn't take long. The Journal reports this morning that Wall Street compensation is on track to possibly outdo 2007... More

WSJ Shows How Personal-Finance Pieces Ought to Be Done

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 1, 2009 at 05:21 PM

It's rare to read a genuinely good personal-finance story, so I was glad to see Karen Blumenthal's column in The... More

NYT: Banks Gearing Up to Kill New Consumer-Protection Agency

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 1, 2009 at 02:57 PM

Continuing the theme of the press focusing on the lobbying efforts of the financial industry to keep the status quo,... More

ProPublica, Post Watchdog Senator’s TARP Meddling

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 1, 2009 at 09:33 AM

ProPublica and the Washington Post are making a nice little team this week. On Monday they wrote about how General... More

NY Times Chugs the Dr Pepper

By Ryan Chittum   Jun 30, 2009 at 02:23 PM

How can The New York Times be this gullible? The paper writes about Dr Pepper Snapple outsourcing its information technology... More

LAT Raises the “Nexus” Sales-Tax Issue

By Ryan Chittum   Jun 30, 2009 at 09:57 AM

The LA Times has an interesting article today on an overlooked aspect of tax policy: The "nexus" exemption for Internet... More

ProPublica, the Post Bring GE Into the Light

By Ryan Chittum   Jun 29, 2009 at 05:28 PM

Props to ProPublica and the Washington Post for a joint story on how General Electric has benefited from $74 billion... More

LA Times Soft-Pedals Wired Editor’s Plagiarism

By Ryan Chittum   Jun 29, 2009 at 03:13 PM

It's bad enough to write a two-source story about plagiarism. It's worse when the two sources are the plagiarist and... More

NYT Listens in as the Mortgage-Mod Plan Hits a Wall

By Ryan Chittum   Jun 29, 2009 at 09:43 AM

The New York Times descends into customer-service hell on A1 today, reporting on the effort to modify mortgages under the... More

A Community Reinvestment Act Reader

We still have to debunk this myth?

By Ryan Chittum   Jun 26, 2009 at 05:27 PM

Felix Salmon takes John Carney of Clusterstock to task for latching on to the right-wing effort to blame the housing... More