Recent Stories

Yikes! It's been hard to keep up with all my stories here; you can often catch some notes on my latest work from my blogs, Chumpchanger and Deadletter.net.

Ripoffs, from Enron to ... well, Enron: Too many columns to list from my column for Slate's finance site, The Big Money--which, alas, shut down in August. In "The Bust Out" I wrote about what the Mafia teaches us about pursuing white collar crime. One way not to do it: the SEC's campaign against Goldman Sachs. More finance stories looked at the endless optimisim of housing prognosticators, and the war between the the inflation haters and deflation fearers.

In some columns I veered away from finance to look at the political climate, from how free markets failed the press in Russia and China to the cynical motivations behind Arizona's anti-immigrant campaign. My final column for The Big Money looked back at Enron, and how the history of yesterday's scandals gets forgotten and rewritten.

The financial crisis? It keeps on giving: In a story about Wall Street pay I talk about how bonus rage misses the causes of the crisis; if you think I take the side of Wall Street against ordinary folks, there's also this one about why debtors have every right to ditch their mortgages. I investigated the case of the unemployed college grad who sued her school.

Other columns have covered the failure of the much hyped "person to person" loan business, the myths about rogue trading and the banking crisis, and the rush to do local news on the Web (without live local reporters).

From the "Money Trail" column: Disgraced Countrywide chief Angelo Mozilo's talent for covering his butt. Why Craigslist's Craig Newmark is so committed to sex ads. Yes, I weigh in on Michael Jackson, too. Plus the Oscars and Wired's Chris Anderson. All in one story. Also, for those who want to venture into the tangle of copyright, a a defense of Google Books.

The economic scene and its context: "Is Wall Street Evil?" looks at the history of Wall Street bashing back to the turn of the century. A story about credit cards looks at how banks came to be at war with their customers. In "Pigou You Too" I wrote about economists' love of Pigouvian taxes. An article about the tiny island nation of Nauru looks at the lessons to take from the brokest country on earth.

Steve Jobs, Meg Whitman, and other folks: "Leave Steve Alone" details why Steve Jobs has good reason to hate the press. A story about Meg Whitman covers why she'll make a lousy candidate for governor of California. I wrote about Putin's Ukrainian adventures and about the strange world of the Iraqi Dinar investors. And going back to macro-economics, I wrote about how the savings crisis helped birth the financial crisis.

Bubble economics in all its forms: This story looks at the nature of bubbles, and how a crash that was so often foretold still came as such a shock. An October story for The Big Money looked ahead to the end of GM and Ford before it was the conventional wisdom. I wrote several stories about the Madoff scandal, a crowning scandal of the bubble years, including this one about why investment scams go unreported and a story about why Madoff should stay out on bail.(The judge agreed). In"The Fuld Curve", a story about how bad CEOs get rich, I wrote about the pay history of Lehman Brothers' failed chief.

Some Noteworthy Magazine Features

A lot has been written about malpractice law and tort reform, but few stories look at what actually happens in the typical malpractice case. For "The Equation" [PDF] [Website] I followed the three way tug of war between a top New York hospital and a law firm specializing in the difficult cases of children with grievous brain damage.

"George Soros is Mad As Hell" [PDF] [Text] profiled the internationalist billionaire, focusing on his despair at the the nation's political direction in a newly paranoid age.

Three months of reporting led to "Sam Walton Made Us a Promise", [PDF] [Text] a nuanced look at Wal-Mart and its workforce that steers clear of both Wal-Mart's PR machine and easy Wal-Mart bashing.

"You Bought, They Sold" [PDF] a Fortune cover project I conceived to illustrate with hard numbers the amazing peaks of executive greed in the stock market frenzy, showed how officers of some of America's losingest corporations walked off with billions in profits as their companies crashed and burned.

A story about business guru Tom Peters asked "Now That We Live In A Tom Peters World, Has Tom Peters Gone Crazy?" [PDF] [Text] and looked at the cultural and ethical implications of his critique of American business. This was one of the first features I wrote at Fortune but remains one of my favorite.

Other articles: Of many other features, two more worth mentioning might be "Little Better Yellow Different" [PDF] [Text], a skeptical take on the advertising business for New York Magazine and "What Did Joe Know?" [PDF] [Text] an investigative story for Fortune about telecom kingpin Joe Nacchio, later convicted on multiple insider trading charges. I've also written for the New York Times Sunday Business section and for Businessweek. In this essay for Businessweek, I recount how AT&T execs demonstrated why the phone giants can't innovate better than any reporter could have wished.

Semi-Recent Stories

The list that started out as "recent stories" seems to have grown beyond the bounds of the first column. So here are some that no longer qualify as recent, but seemed worth keeping on this page.

From Slate, public policy articles ... and dinner party policy: In articles for Slate I wrote about measuring inequality and why eliminating insurers won't cut health care costs. But the Slate story that garnered more attention was about the math behind the age old shortage of marriage-worthy men.

A trifecta of pieces about the mortgage crisis for Slate: Three stories for Slate about the road to financial meltdown. One covered how mortgage giant Countrywide was profiting from the foreclosure business. Another, "How The Mortgage Industry Nurtured Deceit" was about how industry created a nation of liars. And this one predicted in April 2008 that the subprime mess would turn into a much bigger crisis. It did.

Stories about the mortgage crisis and the implosion of the financial industry: A story for Slate's The Big Money looked at how much responsibility for the crash lies with Main Street, not Wall Street. A piece about Lehman Brothers for New York Magazine and one about short sellers for The Big Money give what's happening some historical context.