The Journal floods the zone on the big hedge-fund insider-trading story. It goes page one with a report noting a run on the fund, a Sri Lanka-datelined story on how that country’s stock market tumbled on the arrest of Raj Rajaratnam, its ex-pat and biggest investor, and a look at the not-always-simple line between trading on information and trading on illegal inside information.
It also has a smart story on South Asian immigrants’ success in tech and financial services, calling them a “new power elite.” And finally, there’s a report on Moody’s, whose employee is implicated in the scandal, and the implications for already beleagured credit raters. It’s an impressive show of the resources the paper can deploy.
— This Washington Post story has a bum headline, but it’s otherwise a good look at how Congress is likely to pass legislation that allows states to impose harsher regulations on the financial industry than the federal government, reversing a doctrine enshrined by the Bush Administration that helped worsen predatory lending in the run-up the bubble.
— Condé Nast says it will sell individual issues of its (remaining) magazines for $2.99 on the iPhone. AdAge reports the apps will be replicas of the page layouts of the actual mags. That’s a nice idea, but until companies stop giving their content away for free on the Web, I can’t imagine why anyone would pay for such a thing. You know smartphones have Web browsers, these days. (h/t Romenesko)
Ryan Chittum is a former Wall Street Journal reporter, and deputy editor of The Audit, CJR’s business section. If you see notable business journalism, give him a heads-up at rc2538@columbia.edu. Follow him on Twitter at @ryanchittum.