That’s the question from Felix Salmon, and like Diogenes looking for an honest man, so far he hasn’t found anyone who has an answer. Salmon is getting close to the dirty secret: no one has an answer. The most they have are some interesting datapoints, factoids, and analyses. At the risk of having someone prove […]
Read more...One of the themes du jour is the overrated reporting that goes on in the Wall Street Journal (and we’ve waxed eloquent on this subject many times before, as the posts tagged ‘Media Watch” will attest). While the Journal’s coverage of company news is generally good to very good, it appears that they put their […]
Read more...The Wall Street Journal, in “Fitch Sees Rising Shakiness In Commercial Mortgage Arena,” tells us that the rating agency issued a warning Wednesday on frothy lending in the commercial real estate arena. The problem with this story is that the WSJ makes it sound as if that’s news. It isn’t. The Financial Times reported on […]
Read more...I find it interesting when factoids that are already in the public domain get treated as if they are news. Stephanie Pomboy, as reported by Barron’s Alan Abelson (hat tip Barry Ritholtz) tells us that there are a lot of adjustable rate mortgages that have no equity. And, of course, if housing prices fall, more […]
Read more...Has the Murdoch era already begun? Two days in a row we have had page one stories in the Wall Street Journal that managed to skew the facts. Today’s piece, “Foreign Investors Face New Hurdles Across the Globe,” is misleading in a minor and a major way. The minor way is likely to be apparent […]
Read more...Most news stories touting the findings of a ten year investigation of organic versus conventionally farmed tomatoes make broader claims (example; CNNMoney “All-natural veggies good for heart“) than the study’s immediate findings, namely that the fruit, when raised organically, has nearly double the level of some key flavinoids (quercetin and kaempferol. Flavinoids have been found […]
Read more...Today’s Wall Street Journal, in “Mortgage Mess Shines Light on Brokers’ Role,” tells the sorry tale of one Altaf A. Shaikh, who frequently used the name Zak Khan and left a path of financial devastation in his wake as a subprime mortgage broker. This isn’t a great job of reporting. By focusing on one, and […]
Read more...While we’re have a cliche fest, an ill wind blows nobody good, and it looks like that Bear Stearns hedge fund debacle had some unexpected upside, namely, producing a flight to quality, meaning Treasuries, sparking a rally. I’m sure you could have said the same of past crises (just for starters, the 1997 emerging markets […]
Read more...OK, schizophrenia is a bit too strong a word, but it got your attention, right? “Dissonance” is closer to the mark, and differing points of view in a plugged-in, market-savvy paper like the Financial Times is an interesting sight to behold. Both stories address the same general topic, namely, whether the current mess in subprimes […]
Read more...Either it’s a horribly slow news day, or the Bloomberg people are besotted with the Bear Stearns story. I imagine journalists enjoy schaudenfreude as much as the next guy. From late afternoon until now, even after the Asian markets have opened, the top story on its “Breaking News” section is, “Bear Stearns Enlists Mortgage Chief […]
Read more...The Wall Street Journal, in “Bear’s Stock is Acting Like It’s Name,” adds surprisingly little of substance to what’s already been reported on Bloomberg (see here and here), but the story’s downer tone is the last thing Bear needs at this juncture. One element that has been missing from the mot press coverage but picked […]
Read more...Bloomberg is keeping up a rapid pace of stories on the Bear Stearns hedge funds. Bear has apparently found some buyers for the assets of its High-Grade Structured Credit Leveraged Fund, the one for which it put in place a secured credit facility to permit an orderly workout. This was not an official announcement by […]
Read more...We had wanted to write about the role of models and more important, model assumptions in the ongoing Bear Stearns hedge fund debacle, and Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times, in her story, “When Models Misbehave,” provided some useful intelligence. With all due respect to Morgenson, while she touches on some dimensions of the […]
Read more...In case you missed it, the US stock market was rattled by the continuing aftershocks of the Bear Stearns subprime-related hedge fund fallout, with the Dow down 185, and Bear itself was down in line with the Dow (both fell 1.4%, although Bear was up slightly in the aftermarket at this hour). Now the odd […]
Read more...A more accurate title might be “The Wall Street Journal Goes Out of Its Way to Demonize Chavez.” Narrowly speaking, Venezuela (except perhaps its actions as an OPEC member) are outside the beat of this blog. However, we do take a keen interest in the biases in the Wall Street Journal’s reporting, and this one […]
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