Chris Arnold

NPR correspondent Chris Arnold is based in Boston. His reports are heard regularly on NPR's award-winning newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. He joined NPR in 1996, and was based in San Francisco before moving to Boston in 2001.

Arnold is spending the academic year of 2012 - 2013 as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He will join a small group of other journalists from the U.S. and around the world for this highly respected journalism fellowship. Arnold will be studying, among other things, the future of home ownership in America.

Since 2006, Arnold has spent much of his time reporting on the financial crisis and its aftermath. He has focused on the housing bubble and its collapse. And he's reported on problems within the nation's largest banks that have led to the banks improperly foreclosing on thousands of American homeowners. For this work, Arnold earned a 2011 Edward R. Murrow Award for the special series, "The Foreclosure Nightmare." He's also been honored with the Newspaper Guild's 2009 Heywood Broun Award for broadcast journalism. He was chosen by the Scripps Howard Foundation as a finalist for their National Journalism Award, and he won an Excellence in Financial Journalism Award from N.Y. State's society for CPA's.

Arnold has also recently focused on the now government owned mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In a series of stories in partnership with reporter Jesse Eisinger at ProPublica, Arnold exposed investments at Freddie Mac that raised serious concerns about a conflict of interest between Fannie and Freddie's massive investment portfolios, and their mission to make homeownership more affordable. The stories generated widespread attention, and led to calls for an investigation by members of Congress.

Arnold has covered a range of other subjects and stories for NPR – from Katrina recovery in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, to immigrant workers in the fishing industry, to a new kind of table saw that won't cut your fingers off. He traveled to Turin, Italy, for NPR's coverage of the 2006 Winter Olympics. He has also followed the dramatic rise in the numbers of teenagers abusing the powerful and highly addictive painkiller Oxycontin – more than 1 out of 20 high school seniors report using the drug.

In the days and months following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Arnold reported from New York and contributed to the NPR coverage that won the Overseas Press Club and the George Foster Peabody Awards. He chronicled the recovery effort at Ground Zero, focusing on members of the Port Authority Police department, as they struggled with the deaths of 37 officers - the greatest loss of any police department in U.S. history. Arnold followed the lives of those who lived and worked around Ground Zero - from bond traders and Chinatown garment sewers to small business owners - as they sought to put their lives back together again.

Prior to his move to Boston, Arnold traveled the country for NPR doing feature stories on entrepreneurship. His pieces covered technologists, farmers, and family business owners. He also reported on efforts to kindle entrepreneurship in economically disadvantaged areas ranging from inner-city Los Angeles to the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota.

Arnold has worked in public radio since 1993. Before joining NPR, he was a freelance reporter working out of San Francisco's NPR Member station, KQED.

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4:51pm

Fri March 16, 2012
Economy

The Market's Finally Looking Up: Will It Last?

Originally published on Fri March 16, 2012 11:03 pm

Credit Richard Drew / AP

The stock market hit some major milestones this week: The Standard & Poor's 500 index reached its highest level in more than three years, the Dow Jones industrial average settled in above 13,000 — up about 24 percent since early October — and the Nasdaq rose to its highest level in 11 years. Still, the Federal Reserve has been warning not to get too excited about where the economy is headed next.

David Kotok, chairman and chief investment officer at Cumberland Advisors, says there are a bunch of reason for stocks to be rising.

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6:01pm

Tue March 6, 2012
Economy

How Many U.S. Jobs Does Apple Really Create?

Credit Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Apple has about 47,000 workers in the U.S. That's not a huge amount for such a profitable and influential company. Now the tech giant is saying it has actually created about 10 times that many jobs indirectly.

Some economists are skeptical of the claim. And the move comes as Apple is facing increased criticism and scrutiny over labor practices at factories it outsources to in China.

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12:01am

Thu February 9, 2012
Crisis In The Housing Market

Potential Conflicts At Freddie Mac Draw Scrutiny

Credit Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

A federal Inspector General's office confirmed Wednesday it is looking into Freddie Mac investments that act as bets against homeowners being able to refinance.

In addition, U.S. senators are expected to probe Freddie Mac's investment practices at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday.

Freddie Mac, based in northern Virginia, is the taxpayer-owned mortgage giant whose public mission is to make homeownership more affordable for Americans.

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3:50pm

Fri February 3, 2012
The Two-Way

Senator Demands Answers from Freddie Mac's Regulator

Sen. Robert Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, sent a list of questions about Freddie Mac's controversial trades to the mortgage giant's regulator, highlighting how much remains unknown even after a flurry of statements from the regulator.

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5:01am

Mon January 30, 2012
Your Money

Freddie Mac Betting Against Struggling Homeowners

Freddie Mac, a taxpayer-owned mortgage company, is supposed to make homeownership easier. One thing that makes owning a home more affordable is getting a cheaper mortgage.

But Freddie Mac has invested billions of dollars betting that U.S. homeowners won't be able to refinance their mortgages at today's lower rates, according to an investigation by NPR and ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom.

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12:11pm

Tue December 27, 2011
Crisis In The Housing Market

Housing Market Stays Mired In Low Home Price Spin

Credit Scott Olson / Getty Images

This month, consumer confidence jumped to its highest level since April, a sign that the U.S. economy is starting to mend. But the housing market isn't going along yet with this cheerier mood: Home prices were down 3.4 percent for the year as of October, according to a new report released Tuesday.

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4:44pm

Thu December 15, 2011
Still No Job: Over A Year Without Enough Work

Changes In The Economy Leave Workers Scrambling

If you're unemployed, it can be painfully clear when you don't have the right skills to land a good job.

With unemployment at 8.6 percent, upwards of 13 million Americans are without a job and looking for work. A recent NPR/Kaiser Family Foundation poll surveyed thousands of unemployed and underemployed people, asking whether they thought they had the skills required to find a job.

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12:01am

Wed December 14, 2011
Mitt Romney

As Governor, Romney Balanced Budget By Hiking Fees

When it comes to taxes, the field of Republican presidential candidates is unified: Keep them low and certainly don't raise them.

In both his runs for the White House, Mitt Romney has hewed to this Republican line. But whether he cut or actually raised taxes as governor of Massachusetts is a subject for debate.

All politicians like to talk about cutting taxes. But at the state level during tough economic times, many end up cutting spending while raising taxes because they have to balance their budgets.

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9:15am

Mon November 14, 2011
Crisis In The Housing Market

After Banks' Mistakes, Homeowners Pick Up Pieces

Credit Chris Arnold / NPR

Federal regulators have announced the start of a nationwide review of foreclosures by the nation's largest banks. The goal is to reach homeowners who've been treated unfairly or who lost their house when they shouldn't have.

Banks have started mailing out letters to upwards of 4 million homeowners. The regulators have ordered the banks to find people who have suffered financial harm due to the banks' mistakes, and to offer "remediation."

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4:52am

Thu November 3, 2011
Economy

How Technology Is Eliminating Higher-Skill Jobs

The U.S. economy hit an important milestone last week: Gross domestic product, the sum of all goods and services produced in the country, returned to pre-recession levels. But the gains were made with millions fewer workers. Part of the reason is technology, as computers and machines continue to replace humans.

We used to think about machines taking over mundane jobs, like twisting a screw into a toaster on an assembly line over and over again. But more recently, technology is eliminating higher-skill jobs.

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