Financial whoppers

CJRs The Audit nabbed two money stories that are compelling and depressing at the same time.

In the the first, Eakes! CJR lets the air out of a Forbes article trashing Martin Eakes - an anti-predatory lending crusader - and finds there's not much to it beyond competent punctuation.

Clearly, Forbes wants its readers to know there’s something wrong with Eakes, who heads the Center for Responsible Lending, a Durham, North Carolina, nonprofit that has made a name for itself with valuable research on, and prescient warnings about, abusive practices among subprime and other bottom-tier lenders.

Trouble is, Forbes can’t find any facts—not even one—that even remotely qualify as mud. To support its premise, the piece crosses the line from tough to unfair by trying to cast benign or irrelevant facts as somehow sinister.

The second piece is (unfortunately) another hedge fund implosion. This time, it's Carlyle Capital and they're collapsing to the tune of $16 billion dollars. Like many stories like this, there's always a quote from a financial expert who tells you the bad news is just the beginning.

This time, it comes from Bloomberg:

“Carlyle won’t be the end of it,” said Greg Bundy, executive chairman of Sydney-based merger advisory firm InterFinancial Ltd. and a former head of Merrill Lynch & Co.’s Australian unit. “There’s more to come. The problem is no one can give you an educated guess about how much.”

Horay! More work for the Fed to sort out - maybe they'll start swapping debts with hedge funds next.