Mark Pittman
Encyclopedia
James Mark Pittman was a financial journalist
covering corporate finance
and derivative
markets. He was awarded several prestigious journalism awards, the Gerald Loeb Award
, the George Polk Award, a New York Press Club
award, the Hillman Prize and several New York Associated Press
awards.
. Standing 6 in 4 in (1.93 m), he was a linebacker
on his high school football team.
After attending engineering classes, Pittman graduated in 1981 with a degree in journalism
from the University of Kansas
in Lawrence, Kansas
.
He met his second wife, Laura Fahrenthold of Rochester, New York
, also a journalist. Their two daughters are Nell and Susannah.
His daughter Maggie, born in 1983, is from his first marriage, which ended in divorce.
Five years after moving to Yonkers
from Brooklyn
, they opened an art gallery there in 2005. The name of the gallery, Y.O.H. Gallery, which stood for "Yonkers on Hudson
", was an attempt to blend the city's urban culture with phrasing suggestive of more affluent towns on the Hudson further north.
Pittman died in Yonkers in 2009.
before moving to Rochester, where he worked for a year at the Democrat & Chronicle. From 1985 to 1997, he worked as a reporter, editor and bureau chief at the Times Herald-Record
in Middletown, New York
. He had a reputation there for being intimidating, relentless, funny and brilliant. He joined Bloomberg News in 1997, where he wrote about finance, private equity
, mergers and acquisitions
, energy markets, politics and economics.
Commenting on Pittman's sense of humor, Congressman Brad Miller wrote in the Huffington Post.
Pittman said that his early experience dealing with police gave him a "big BS
detector" because he was lied to so much by the police, the victims and those helping the victims. He had to sort through all the lies to get to the real story, which was different from the one he was being told. One journalist and friend called Pittman's style of reporting "Hypocrisy laid bare; it’s simple accountability reporting, albeit done with a high degree of technical skill."
In 2008, he was part of the team that won a Gerald Loeb Award for a five-part series called “Wall Street’s Faustian Bargain.” The Loeb award is the highest accolade in financial journalism. Pittman's lead story, called “Suprime Securities Market Began as 'Group of 5' Over Chinese” explained how precarious the financial markets were, that if a mere 5% of U.S. mortgage borrowers missed their monthly payments, it could lead to a worldwide freeze in lending.
Pittman broke a number of major financial stories, including that of how Goldman Sachs
, Merrill Lynch
, Morgan Stanley
, Deutsche Bank
and others gained from the bailout of AIG
. He also broke the story about former Treasury Secretary
Henry Paulson
's involvement creating the subprime mortgage crisis
when he was CEO
of Goldman Sachs
.
, were covering the bailout story as it was happening and they started wondering what they could do to show the big picture. They took a whiteboard
and began to list all the emergency and lending programs that were being guaranteed to the banks. They discovered the amount going to prop up the financial system
dwarfed the $700 billion
Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). It added up to $12.8 trillionOne trillion is a one with twelve zeros. Most calculators cannot display the number because it has 13 digits and most calculators only allow ten. If a person making $29,000 a year spends no money whatsoever, it would take 34,482 years to save a billion dollars. (See Dave Johnson, "9 Pictures That Expose This Country's Obscene Division of Wealth" AlterNet, February 14, 2011.) and it wasn't clear in all cases where the money was going. The Federal Reserve alone had programs adding up to $7.7 trillion, including the bailouts of Citigroup
and AIG
. The Treasury had an additional $2.7 trillion, including the $700 billion for TARP, $24 billion in tax breaks for banks, the $168 billion Bush stimulus
and the $787 billion Obama stimulus
packages. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
(FDIC) had another $2 trillion in programs. Not all the money was spent, but much was in guarantees to the banks at taxpayer expense, against future losses so the banks wouldn't fail.
A number of the programs at the Federal Reserve were unclear as to who was getting funds and what sort of collateral
the government was getting in return for the loans. Pittman decided he wanted to find out who was borrowing from the Federal Reserve, how much they were borrowing and what kind of collateral the Fed was getting in return. He filed a Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) request to gain records about taxpayer-financed policies that were being withheld from the public, to wit, where the Fed had lent 2 trillion taxpayer dollars and what it was getting in return. The Fed denied the request, he appealed and they denied it again.
Saying "It's not Ben Bernanke
's money, it's our money", Pittman then decided to sue the Fed in federal court
, making headlines as the first person to ever sue the Federal Reserve. Pittman and his colleague Craig Torres
filed the suit in conjunction with Bloomberg News. On August 24, 2009, Judge Loretta A. Preska
ruled the Fed had "improperly withheld" the information and gave it five days to turn the information over to Bloomberg. The Fed was rebuffed twice in appellate court
, but on August 27, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals granted the Fed's request to delay implementation of the ruling until October 19 so it may appeal to the Supreme Court.
In September 2009, after the initial ruling in Bloomberg's favor, the Clearing House Association, LLC
, a group of 20 of the largest commercial banks, joined the lawsuit. It filed an appeal to the Supreme Court on October 26, 2010, but the Fed did not join the appeal. Several news organizations have filed amicus briefs in support of Bloomberg. , though Pittman has since died, the case remains on appeal.
and Andrew Cockburn
, who then featured him prominently in their documentary about the collapse of the subprime market
. The title of the unnarrated film, American Casino
, comes from something Pittman says in the beginning of the film. It begins with a dissection of bank deregulation, largely by Pittman, and continues with a "thriller-like exposition" of the precarious financial boom built on new homeowners, often minorities, who were charged hidden escrow costs in documents they didn't understand.
winner and economist Joseph Stiglitz called Pittman "one of the great financial journalists of our time.” Pulitzer Prize
winning financial journalist Gretchen Morgenson
called him "a giant", saying that "His investigative work during the crisis set the standard for other reporters everywhere." A former critic, Felix Salmon
, wrote, "His loss to the profession is irreplaceable." He was also well respected at Standard & Poors (S&P), where Chris Atkins, a vice president, on learning of Pittman's passing, wrote that he never once called to complain about Pittman's stories about S&P because he could never find a factual error.In relating Atkins' message in his eulogy for Pittman, Bob Ivry explained the difficulty of such accuracy, that it involved examining large amounts of data in spreadsheets, "800-page" prospectuses of collateralized debt obligation
s detailing cash flows, default rates, prepayment expectations and so on. Pittman was the recipient of numerous awards for his work.
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
covering corporate finance
Corporate finance
Corporate finance is the area of finance dealing with monetary decisions that business enterprises make and the tools and analysis used to make these decisions. The primary goal of corporate finance is to maximize shareholder value while managing the firm's financial risks...
and derivative
Derivative (finance)
A derivative instrument is a contract between two parties that specifies conditions—in particular, dates and the resulting values of the underlying variables—under which payments, or payoffs, are to be made between the parties.Under U.S...
markets. He was awarded several prestigious journalism awards, the Gerald Loeb Award
Gerald Loeb Award
The Gerald Loeb Award, also referred to as the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, is a recognition of excellence in journalism, especially in the fields of business, finance and the economy. The award was established in 1957 by Gerald Loeb, a founding partner of...
, the George Polk Award, a New York Press Club
New York Press Club
The New York Press Club is a membership organization of and for journalists and media professionals in the New York City metropolitan area. The club is a private, non-profit corporation and is not affiliated with any government office or agency and does not advocate or participate in any political...
award, the Hillman Prize and several New York Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
awards.
Biographical details
Pittman was born in Kansas City, KansasKansas City, Kansas
Kansas City is the third-largest city in the state of Kansas and is the county seat of Wyandotte County. It is a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, and is the third largest city in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. The city is part of a consolidated city-county government known as the "Unified...
. Standing 6 in 4 in (1.93 m), he was a linebacker
Linebacker
A linebacker is a position in American football that was invented by football coach Fielding H. Yost of the University of Michigan. Linebackers are members of the defensive team, and line up approximately three to five yards behind the line of scrimmage, behind the defensive linemen...
on his high school football team.
After attending engineering classes, Pittman graduated in 1981 with a degree in journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
from the University of Kansas
University of Kansas
The University of Kansas is a public research university and the largest university in the state of Kansas. KU campuses are located in Lawrence, Wichita, Overland Park, and Kansas City, Kansas with the main campus being located in Lawrence on Mount Oread, the highest point in Lawrence. The...
in Lawrence, Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas
Lawrence is the sixth largest city in the U.S. State of Kansas and the county seat of Douglas County. Located in northeastern Kansas, Lawrence is the anchor city of the Lawrence, Kansas, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Douglas County...
.
He met his second wife, Laura Fahrenthold of Rochester, New York
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
, also a journalist. Their two daughters are Nell and Susannah.
His daughter Maggie, born in 1983, is from his first marriage, which ended in divorce.
Five years after moving to Yonkers
Yonkers, New York
Yonkers is the fourth most populous city in the state of New York , and the most populous city in Westchester County, with a population of 195,976...
from Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, they opened an art gallery there in 2005. The name of the gallery, Y.O.H. Gallery, which stood for "Yonkers on Hudson
Hudson River
The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...
", was an attempt to blend the city's urban culture with phrasing suggestive of more affluent towns on the Hudson further north.
Pittman died in Yonkers in 2009.
Career
Pittman started out as a police-beat reporter for the Coffeyville Journal in Coffeyville, KansasCoffeyville, Kansas
Coffeyville is a city situated along the Verdigris River in the southeastern part of Montgomery County, located in Southeast Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 10,295...
before moving to Rochester, where he worked for a year at the Democrat & Chronicle. From 1985 to 1997, he worked as a reporter, editor and bureau chief at the Times Herald-Record
Times Herald-Record
The Times Herald-Record, often referred to as The Record or Middletown Record in its coverage area, is a daily newspaper published in Middletown, New York, covering the northwest suburbs of New York City. It covers Orange, Sullivan and Ulster counties in New York; Pike County in Pennsylvania; and...
in Middletown, New York
Middletown, Orange County, New York
Middletown is a city in Orange County, New York, United States. It lies in New York's Hudson Valley region, near the Wallkill River and the foothills of the Shawangunk Mountains. Middletown is situated between Port Jervis and Newburgh, New York. The city's population was 25,388 at the 2000 census...
. He had a reputation there for being intimidating, relentless, funny and brilliant. He joined Bloomberg News in 1997, where he wrote about finance, private equity
Private equity
Private equity, in finance, is an asset class consisting of equity securities in operating companies that are not publicly traded on a stock exchange....
, mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...
, energy markets, politics and economics.
Commenting on Pittman's sense of humor, Congressman Brad Miller wrote in the Huffington Post.
Predicted financial crisis
In summer 2007, Pittman wrote stories predicting the collapse of the banking system. His article "S&P, Moody’s Hide Rising Risk on $200 Billion of Mortgage Bonds" was excoriated by Portfolio.com in an unsigned post, which was later reversed in a signed apology. He was instead praised for "doing the kind of provocative journalism that treads new ground and rings alarms."Pittman said that his early experience dealing with police gave him a "big BS
Bullshit
Bullshit is a common English expletive which may be shortened to the euphemism bull or the initialism B.S. In British English, "bollocks" is a comparable expletive, although bullshit is commonly used in British English...
detector" because he was lied to so much by the police, the victims and those helping the victims. He had to sort through all the lies to get to the real story, which was different from the one he was being told. One journalist and friend called Pittman's style of reporting "Hypocrisy laid bare; it’s simple accountability reporting, albeit done with a high degree of technical skill."
In 2008, he was part of the team that won a Gerald Loeb Award for a five-part series called “Wall Street’s Faustian Bargain.” The Loeb award is the highest accolade in financial journalism. Pittman's lead story, called “Suprime Securities Market Began as 'Group of 5' Over Chinese” explained how precarious the financial markets were, that if a mere 5% of U.S. mortgage borrowers missed their monthly payments, it could lead to a worldwide freeze in lending.
Pittman broke a number of major financial stories, including that of how Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is an American multinational bulge bracket investment banking and securities firm that engages in global investment banking, securities, investment management, and other financial services primarily with institutional clients...
, Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch is the wealth management division of Bank of America. With over 15,000 financial advisors and $2.2 trillion in client assets it is the world's largest brokerage. Formerly known as Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., prior to 2009 the firm was publicly owned and traded on the New York...
, Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley is a global financial services firm headquartered in New York City serving a diversified group of corporations, governments, financial institutions, and individuals. Morgan Stanley also operates in 36 countries around the world, with over 600 offices and a workforce of over 60,000....
, Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank AG is a global financial service company with its headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany. It employs more than 100,000 people in over 70 countries, and has a large presence in Europe, the Americas, Asia Pacific and the emerging markets...
and others gained from the bailout of AIG
AIG
AIG is American International Group, a major American insurance corporation.AIG may also refer to:* And-inverter graph, a concept in computer theory* Answers in Genesis, a creationist organization in the U.S.* Arta Industrial Group in Iran...
. He also broke the story about former Treasury Secretary
United States Secretary of the Treasury
The Secretary of the Treasury of the United States is the head of the United States Department of the Treasury, which is concerned with financial and monetary matters, and, until 2003, also with some issues of national security and defense. This position in the Federal Government of the United...
Henry Paulson
Henry Paulson
Henry Merritt "Hank" Paulson, Jr. is an American banker who served as the 74th United States Secretary of the Treasury. He previously served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs.-Early life and family:...
's involvement creating the subprime mortgage crisis
Subprime mortgage crisis
The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis was one of the first indicators of the late-2000s financial crisis, characterized by a rise in subprime mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures, and the resulting decline of securities backed by said mortgages....
when he was CEO
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
of Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is an American multinational bulge bracket investment banking and securities firm that engages in global investment banking, securities, investment management, and other financial services primarily with institutional clients...
.
Sues Federal Reserve
Around September – October 2008, as the financial meltdown was taking place, Pittman and his Bloomberg colleagues, including Bob IvryBob Ivry
Robert Ivry is an American financial journalist, and staff reporter for Bloomberg News.He worked for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, San Francisco Examiner, Bergen Record, of Hackensack, New Jersey....
, were covering the bailout story as it was happening and they started wondering what they could do to show the big picture. They took a whiteboard
Whiteboard
A whiteboard is a name for any glossy, usually white surface for nonpermanent markings. Whiteboards are analogous to chalkboards, allowing rapid marking and erasing of markings on their surface...
and began to list all the emergency and lending programs that were being guaranteed to the banks. They discovered the amount going to prop up the financial system
Financial system
In finance, the financial system is the system that allows the transfer of money between savers and borrowers. A financial system can operate on a global, regional or firm specific level...
dwarfed the $700 billion
1000000000 (number)
1,000,000,000 is the natural number following 999,999,999 and preceding 1,000,000,001.In scientific notation, it is written as 109....
Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). It added up to $12.8 trillionOne trillion is a one with twelve zeros. Most calculators cannot display the number because it has 13 digits and most calculators only allow ten. If a person making $29,000 a year spends no money whatsoever, it would take 34,482 years to save a billion dollars. (See Dave Johnson, "9 Pictures That Expose This Country's Obscene Division of Wealth" AlterNet, February 14, 2011.) and it wasn't clear in all cases where the money was going. The Federal Reserve alone had programs adding up to $7.7 trillion, including the bailouts of Citigroup
Citigroup
Citigroup Inc. or Citi is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Citigroup was formed from one of the world's largest mergers in history by combining the banking giant Citicorp and financial conglomerate...
and AIG
AIG
AIG is American International Group, a major American insurance corporation.AIG may also refer to:* And-inverter graph, a concept in computer theory* Answers in Genesis, a creationist organization in the U.S.* Arta Industrial Group in Iran...
. The Treasury had an additional $2.7 trillion, including the $700 billion for TARP, $24 billion in tax breaks for banks, the $168 billion Bush stimulus
Economic Stimulus Act of 2008
The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 was an Act of Congress providing for several kinds of economic stimuli intended to boost the United States economy in 2008 and to avert a recession, or ameliorate economic conditions. The stimulus package was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on January...
and the $787 billion Obama stimulus
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, abbreviated ARRA and commonly referred to as the Stimulus or The Recovery Act, is an economic stimulus package enacted by the 111th United States Congress in February 2009 and signed into law on February 17, 2009, by President Barack Obama.To...
packages. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is a United States government corporation created by the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933. It provides deposit insurance, which guarantees the safety of deposits in member banks, currently up to $250,000 per depositor per bank. , the FDIC insures deposits at...
(FDIC) had another $2 trillion in programs. Not all the money was spent, but much was in guarantees to the banks at taxpayer expense, against future losses so the banks wouldn't fail.
A number of the programs at the Federal Reserve were unclear as to who was getting funds and what sort of collateral
Collateral (finance)
In lending agreements, collateral is a borrower's pledge of specific property to a lender, to secure repayment of a loan.The collateral serves as protection for a lender against a borrower's default - that is, any borrower failing to pay the principal and interest under the terms of a loan obligation...
the government was getting in return for the loans. Pittman decided he wanted to find out who was borrowing from the Federal Reserve, how much they were borrowing and what kind of collateral the Fed was getting in return. He filed a Freedom of Information Act
Freedom of Information Act (United States)
The Freedom of Information Act is a federal freedom of information law that allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States government. The Act defines agency records subject to disclosure, outlines mandatory disclosure...
(FOIA) request to gain records about taxpayer-financed policies that were being withheld from the public, to wit, where the Fed had lent 2 trillion taxpayer dollars and what it was getting in return. The Fed denied the request, he appealed and they denied it again.
Saying "It's not Ben Bernanke
Ben Bernanke
Ben Shalom Bernanke is an American economist, and the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States. During his tenure as Chairman, Bernanke has overseen the response of the Federal Reserve to late-2000s financial crisis....
's money, it's our money", Pittman then decided to sue the Fed in federal court
United States federal courts
The United States federal courts make up the judiciary branch of federal government of the United States organized under the United States Constitution and laws of the federal government.-Categories:...
, making headlines as the first person to ever sue the Federal Reserve. Pittman and his colleague Craig Torres
Craig Torres
Craig Torres is an American financial journalist, and reporter for Bloomberg News in Washington, D.C.He graduated from Harvard College, and was a Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1989....
filed the suit in conjunction with Bloomberg News. On August 24, 2009, Judge Loretta A. Preska
Loretta A. Preska
Loretta A. Preska is the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and a former nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.-Background:...
ruled the Fed had "improperly withheld" the information and gave it five days to turn the information over to Bloomberg. The Fed was rebuffed twice in appellate court
Appellate court
An appellate court, commonly called an appeals court or court of appeals or appeal court , is any court of law that is empowered to hear an appeal of a trial court or other lower tribunal...
, but on August 27, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals granted the Fed's request to delay implementation of the ruling until October 19 so it may appeal to the Supreme Court.
In September 2009, after the initial ruling in Bloomberg's favor, the Clearing House Association, LLC
Clearing House Association, LLC
The Clearing House Association, LLC is the nation’s oldest banking association representing 17 of the world's largest commercial banks, which collectively employ over 2 million people and hold more than half of all U.S. deposits...
, a group of 20 of the largest commercial banks, joined the lawsuit. It filed an appeal to the Supreme Court on October 26, 2010, but the Fed did not join the appeal. Several news organizations have filed amicus briefs in support of Bloomberg. , though Pittman has since died, the case remains on appeal.
Documentary film American Casino
His efforts drew the attention of LeslieLeslie Cockburn
Leslie Corkill Redlich Cockburn is an American writer and filmmaker who has covered a wide variety of international stories in almost every part of the globe.-Early life and career:...
and Andrew Cockburn
Andrew Cockburn
Andrew Cockburn is a journalist who has lived in the United States for many years.-Early life and family:Born in London in 1947, Cockburn grew up in County Cork, Ireland. His father was socialist author and journalist Claud Cockburn...
, who then featured him prominently in their documentary about the collapse of the subprime market
Subprime lending
In finance, subprime lending means making loans to people who may have difficulty maintaining the repayment schedule...
. The title of the unnarrated film, American Casino
American Casino (documentary film)
American Casino is a 2009 documentary film about the American subprime mortgage crisis. It is directed and produced by Leslie Cockburn with Andrew Cockburn as co-producer....
, comes from something Pittman says in the beginning of the film. It begins with a dissection of bank deregulation, largely by Pittman, and continues with a "thriller-like exposition" of the precarious financial boom built on new homeowners, often minorities, who were charged hidden escrow costs in documents they didn't understand.
Recognition and awards
Nobel PrizeNobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
winner and economist Joseph Stiglitz called Pittman "one of the great financial journalists of our time.” Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winning financial journalist Gretchen Morgenson
Gretchen Morgenson
Gretchen C. Morgenson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who writes the Market Watch column for the Sunday "Money & Business" section of the New York Times.-Life:...
called him "a giant", saying that "His investigative work during the crisis set the standard for other reporters everywhere." A former critic, Felix Salmon
Felix Salmon
Felix Salmon is a financial journalist, formerly of Portfolio Magazine and Euromoney, and a blogging editor for Reuters. He was also author of a Wired cover story on the Gaussian copula....
, wrote, "His loss to the profession is irreplaceable." He was also well respected at Standard & Poors (S&P), where Chris Atkins, a vice president, on learning of Pittman's passing, wrote that he never once called to complain about Pittman's stories about S&P because he could never find a factual error.In relating Atkins' message in his eulogy for Pittman, Bob Ivry explained the difficulty of such accuracy, that it involved examining large amounts of data in spreadsheets, "800-page" prospectuses of collateralized debt obligation
Collateralized debt obligation
Collateralized debt obligations are a type of structured asset-backed security with multiple "tranches" that are issued by special purpose entities and collateralized by debt obligations including bonds and loans. Each tranche offers a varying degree of risk and return so as to meet investor demand...
s detailing cash flows, default rates, prepayment expectations and so on. Pittman was the recipient of numerous awards for his work.
- Six New York State Associated Press awards on subjects ranging from an investigation into the deaths of nine children in an elementary school building collapse to coverage of the 25th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival
- 2008 Gerald Loeb Award from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, “Wall Street’s Faustian Bargain”
- 2009 George Polk Award
- 2009 New York Press Club Journalism Award for newsradio, "Fed Defies Transparency"
- 2010 National Headliner Award for business news coverage, "Lehman's Lessons" (first place)
- 2010 Hillman Prize for newspaper journalism, "The Fight for Transparency"
Selected articles
- Mark Pittman, "Paulson's Focus on 'Excesses' Shows Goldman Gorged (Update1)" Bloomberg News (November 5, 2007). Retrieved March 8, 2011
- Mark Pittman, Bob Ivry and Alison Fitzgerald, "Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Disclose (Update2)" Bloomberg News (November 10, 2008). Retrieved March 8, 2011
- Mark Pittman, "Subprime Securities Market Began as 'Group of 5' Over Chinese" Bloomberg News (December 17, 2007). Gerald Loeb AwardGerald Loeb AwardThe Gerald Loeb Award, also referred to as the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, is a recognition of excellence in journalism, especially in the fields of business, finance and the economy. The award was established in 1957 by Gerald Loeb, a founding partner of...
winning article - Mark Pittman, "Goldman, Merrill Collect Billions After Fed's AIG Bailout Loans" Bloomberg News (September 29, 2008). Retrieved March 8, 2011
See also
- List of George Polk Award Winners
- Alison FitzgeraldAlison FitzgeraldAlison Fitzgerald is an American financial journalist, and Bloomberg News reporter.She graduated from Georgetown University, and from Northwestern University, Medill School of Journalism....
, a colleague at Bloomberg News - Gary J. AguirreGary J. AguirreGary J. Aguirre is an American lawyer, former investigator with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and whistleblower. After working in a law firm briefly, he became a public defender, then worked as a trial lawyer in California. Having reached his professional and financial...
, lawyer who predicted the financial crisis of 2008 and filed an FOIA suit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission - GriftopiaGriftopiaGriftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America is a 2010 book by the political journalist Matt Taibbi about the events that led to the financial crisis of 2008....
, Matt TaibbiMatt TaibbiMatthew C. "Matt" Taibbi is an American author and journalist reporting on politics, media, finance, and sports for Rolling Stone and Men's Journal, often in a polemical style. He has also edited and written for The eXile, the New York Press, and The Beast.- Early years :Taibbi grew up in the...
's book about the financial crisis of 2008 - Regulatory captureRegulatory captureIn economics, regulatory capture occurs when a state regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead advances the commercial or special interests that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. Regulatory capture is a form of government failure, as it can act as...
- Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan FacilityTerm Asset-Backed Securities Loan FacilityThe Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility is a program created by the U.S. Federal Reserve to spur consumer credit lending. The program was announced on November 25, 2008 and was to support the issuance of asset-backed securities collateralized by student loans, auto loans, credit card...
, Federal Reserve program
External links
- Mark Pittman on Bloomberg News YouTube.com, "Another Writedown For Banks" (April 3, 2009). Retrieved March 8, 2011
- American Casino news Official website. Retrieved March 8, 2011
- Jason Linkins, "Bloomberg Reporter Mark Pittman's Passing Honored By MSNBC's Ratigan" Huffington Post (November 30, 2009). Retrieved March 8, 2011