Step one: don’t have a manual. That’s the message in an information-packed new book about the inner workings of the SEC just after the Madoff and now largely forgotten (but just as egregious) Allen Stanford frauds.
In his memoir of five years at the agency, former SEC Director of Investment Management Norm Champ (now back
What to do when the databases you rely on start stripping out the very data you are paying for?
Word in today’s Wall Street Journal that the main credit reporting firms will be removing many civil judgments and tax liens from credit reports prompts us to restate one our core beliefs:
Not only do databases
What will it take for artificial intelligence to surpass us humans? After the Oscars fiasco last night, it doesn’t look like much.
As a person who thinks a lot about the power of human thought versus that of machines, what is striking is not that the mix-up of the Best Picture award was the product
There is a huge branch of the “fake news” business that gets no attention at all: the fake news consumed each day by corporate America that has nothing to do with politics, but everything to do with business – the bulk of the $18 trillion U.S. economy.
We’ve been sorting through this kind of thing
A wonderful piece in the Wall Street Journal here called “The Logic of Our Fear of Flying” does a great job explaining our irrational fear of flying using concepts from math. We all know that our chances of dying in a plane crash are much lower than dying in a car accident, and yet many
This blog may be one of the few publications in the Western world that has never written the word “Kardashian,” but that has now changed. In the stories about the robbery in Paris of Kim Kardashian we found numerous issues that touch on the work we do.
After my recent book The Art of Fact
We pretty regularly find ourselves blogging about small business owners that draw people into scams. We’ve seen the would-be movie executive, the sweet-talking investment solicitor, the landscaper and the produce company owner. Too often, we find that defrauded consumers and investors could have avoided their losses by doing some basic due diligence.
Due diligence is all about following up on red flags, but if you don’t find them, there’s nothing on which to follow up.
Thus, our tireless refrain: turn over every piece of public record information you can about a person, and don’t leave it to others.
We were reminded of this by the story this
According to the Sacramento Bee, a would-be movie studio executive, Carissa Carpenter, pleaded not guilty last week to defrauding investors of at least $5 million during her failed 17-year attempt at creating a movie studio in Northern California. Over the 17-year period, she shifted 
the location of her planned studio several times. Her last