Forbes reporter not sure anything was missed in coverage

Joshua Zumbrun, the Washington correspondent of Forbes, writes Wednesday that he’s unsure as to whether the business press should be blamed for missing the signs that led to the current economic turmoil.

Zumbrun writes, “I came to Forbes in March 2008 — I actually started the week after Bear Stearns exploded. Before that I was on metro at the Washington Post. As a somewhat newly-minted financial reporter I don’t feel guilty for having missed the story — it wasn’t my story.

“So I don’t think I’m personally vested in whether or not financial journalists ‘missed it.’ But my sense is that a lot of warnings were out there. I’d certainly read about crazy mortgage products, and the crazy financial innovations on Wall Street. My takeaway was that these were potentially dangerous, and we’d all read the stories about LTCM. Back in 2004-05 I started thinking about buying real estate but somehow came away with the impression that there was a good chance there was a dangerous real estate bubble.

“I didn’t have any perspective to guess what all would unfold but I knew this stuff was out there. It must have been the media that gave me that impression. So here’s some of the stuff I was reading a few years ago.

“I can’t help but think some of the people who feel so angry and surprised by the meltdown probably should have been reading at least one of these news products regularly. When you skim a lot of different places online I think you end up missing stuff that’s not a headline on multiple sites.”

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