The Audit RSS
Thu, 3 Jul 2008
Missing The Story On IndyMac
Ex-WSJ reporter on the mortgage lender's bad deeds
By Posted at 03:59 PM
The Center for Responsible Lending, a borrowers’ advocate group, has an eye-opening report on IndyMac, the troubled California mortgage lender.
The business-press has too-quickly moved on to breathless debates about the fate of Wall Street houses and other high-concept financial matters without pausing to consider what lay at the root of the credit crisis: deceptive and fraudulent lending... Read More
Skewering The "Green Issue"
The Onion gets it, at least
By Posted at 02:35 PM
The Onion works its customary magic in its newsstand edition this week with a special edition “All-Paper Salute to the Environment”, that's as to-the-point a mocking of the hypocrisy of the publishing industry’s green issues as we’ve seen.
Inside it has a well-worth-reading oldie but a goodie headlined “450,000 Unsold Earth Day Issues of ‘Time’ Trucked To Landfill.”
Bonus... Read More
Burning the Mortgage?
Bloomberg says torchings of foreclosures are rising, with little evidence
By Posted at 12:47 PM
We’d like to smoke out a Bloomberg story saying home arson is “surging” as a result of the wave of foreclosures.
It’s not even clear from its story that arson is surging, let alone that foreclosures have anything to do with it.
The idea is plausible—foreclosed-upon borrowers might want to torch their houses—but Bloomberg can’t prove it. The... Read More
Opening Bell: Let 'Em Fail
Paulson says bad banks should go; fugitive hedgie surrenders; LAT cuts; etc.
By Posted at 08:35 AM
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson called for better regulatory tools to help prevent the failures of individual financial firms from threatening the entire global system, report The Wall Street Journal on A3 and The New York Times on C2.
Paulson said the market thinks some institutions are “too big to fail”, something the government can’t allow to... Read More
Wed, 2 Jul 2008
The V-Word and Dick Grasso
By Posted at 03:58 PM
Was Dick Grasso’s win in court yesterday a personal “vindication” for him?
That’s what The Wall Street Journal says in the second paragraph of its page-one story. The New York state appeals court ruling—on a technicality—lets Grasso keep all of his $187.5 million pay package, which he, ahem, earned as head of the New York Stock Exchange, which... Read More
Talkin' About Credit-Default Swaps
Why being bearish on them means you're likely bullish in general
By Posted at 03:15 PM
Now of course, we know all about credit-default swaps. And we know that you know all about credit-default swaps. I mean, who doesn't, after all the talk of them in recent months? Duh. And you'd have to be a moron not to know their relationship to collateralized debt obligations. Hello? But Dean Starkman, who knows everything, thought it might be... Read More
The Press Drives Out to the Country
USA Today adds to Times on gas hit to rural U.S.
By Posted at 11:50 AM
The press has written quite a bit about how the price of gasoline is making the exurban lifestyle cost prohibitive for some. The old “drive until you qualify” for a mortgage dictum, especially in high-price places like California, no longer computes, and home prices in those long-commute towns are getting slammed harder than just about anywhere.
... Read MoreCostco vs. Wal-Mart
Slate asks why their labor practices are so different
By Posted at 10:02 AM
Over at Slate, Liza Featherstone asks a good question: Why doesn’t Wal-Mart pay its employees as well as Costco does?
Costco’s stock, after all, has left Wal-Mart’s in the dust over the last few years and it’s gotten reams of good press. We know what Wal-Mart’s (deservedly) gotten.
Featherstone doesn't gloss over the fact that Wal-Mart’s low profit... Read More
Opening Bell: Moodier and Moodier
Ratings firm pushes out exec; Grasso keeps riches; bust makes Starbucks contract for once; etc.
By Posted at 08:25 AM
Moody’s got rid of an executive after finding “inappropriate” and “deeply disappointing” conduct in his staff’s ratings of financial derivatives. It’s yet another black eye for the credit-ratings industry.
The Financial Times, which broke the story in May that forced Moody’s to bring in outside investigators, says on page one that a rating committee “breached internal codes of... Read More
Tue, 1 Jul 2008
Blackstone vs. the Bean Counters
CEO likes fair-value when prices go up but not when they go down
By Posted at 11:55 AM
Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times scores an interview with Blackstone Group chief Stephen Schwarzman, who’s running around town saying an accounting rule is to blame for much of the severity of the credit crisis. Sorkin thinks the whining is so amusing he can hardly keep from laughing in print.
A little background: Back in November,... Read More
