Joe Nocera does it again

On the New York Times Op-Ed page he calls Apple CEO Tim Cook a liar.

Nocera. Photo: Fred R. Conrad/New York Times

FORTUNE -- I met Joe Nocera once, and he seemed like a nice guy. Over his long career as a business journalist -- including more than a decade at Fortune -- he's done some first-rate work on Apple (AAPL). "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs," a profile for Esquire of the entrepreneur at age 31, may be the best close-up portrait of Jobs that anybody has written, before or since. And two days after Jobs resigned in 2011 he wrote a lovely farewell column that was especially gracious, given their past history.

But Nocera has also made it his business to be the fiercest critic of what he sees as shady business dealings at the company's highest levels -- first with backdated options that led to resignation of Apple's general counsel and the retirement of its former CFO (but not, to Nocera's evident dismay, an SEC complaint against Jobs himself), and now with the offshore tax strategies that brought Jobs' successor, Tim Cook, before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday.

I happen to agree with one of the points Nocera makes in his New York Times op-ed column Thursday. There is something about sending tens of billions of dollars to a holding company that has tax residency in no country on earth that violates the spirit of the law -- despite Cook's assertion to the contrary.

But what will be remembered about Nocera's latest Apple column is that he called Tim Cook a liar -- accusing him of telling, under oath, a "whopper" and a "flat-out lie."

Nocera implies, but doesn't actually say, that he makes those charges after watching Cook's testimony.

I watched Cook's testimony -- twice. I find it hard to believe that Nocera saw any of it. And having read the documents and news articles he cites, I believe that on the points with which he has factual disagreements with Cook, he's provably wrong.

Specifically:

• Nocera claims that Apple "pays only 10% of its pretax income in taxes." But he gets that 10% figure by making the same rookie mistake the subcommittee's staff did, dividing Apple's U.S. taxes by its worldwide sales.
• He claims that Apple routes "tens of billions in pretax profits" to an Irish subsidiary, when Cook testified repeatedly -- under oath -- that those were post-tax profits.
• He points readers to a Wall Street Journal article that says Apple duped investors by making it look like it paid more taxes than it did. First, I suspect investors will be pleased to learn that Apple earns more that it reports each quarter. Second, if Nocera had read to the end of the Journal article, he would have learned that the paper's own accounting expert was unpersuaded by the subcommittee's claim that Apple's taxes were overstated.
• He quotes Sen. Carl Levin's characterization of Apple's Irish tax haven as if it was the official conclusion of the subcommittee's investigation. But anyone who watched Levin's performance would know that he said all kinds of things in a final 10 minute rant that contradicted previous testimony and known facts, and that he closed that portion of the hearing without giving Apple's witnesses a chance to respond.
• Finally, there's this: "[Cook] even said that the low taxes Apple pays overseas is on the profits of its overseas sales. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this was a flat-out lie." I've heard the testimony and read the subcommittee report. As near as I can tell, Apple does pay taxes overseas on the sales it makes overseas. How can Nocera call Cook a liar without the evidence to back it up?

As I say, Nocera has a long history with Apple -- a history, in his defense, that includes being told some flat-out lies. The biggest whopper was probably the one Steve Jobs told him in 2008 when, according to Nocera, Jobs assured him that he didn't have cancer.

It was Nocera's 2008 account of that phone call with Jobs that captured, in two sentences, the essence of their relationship:

"This is Steve Jobs," [Jobs] began. "You think I'm an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he's above the law, and I think you're a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong."

Posted in: Apple, Carl Levin, Hearings, Joe Nocera, New York Times, Overseas, Senate, Steve Jobs, taxes, Tim Cook

• Forecast of the day: iPhone and Galaxy June sales

  Google Trends says Apple beats low expectations, Samsung momentum stays strong.

  FORTUNE -- Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty unveiled a new crowdsourced forecasting tool Tuesday. As explained in an April whitepaper, the AlphaWise Smartphone Tracker is based on an analysis of Google Trends, using different search terms for different regions and adjusting for seasonal trends.

  The results of the first month's survey of the U.S., U.K., German, French, Japanese and Chinese markets are shown in the chart above.

  As MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 22, 2013 7:09 PM ET
  Posted in: Alphawise, Apple, Galaxy, iPhone, Katy Huberty, Morgan Stanley, Samsung

• Bloomberg: Apple stuck bond buyers with a '$280 million loss'

  As if Apple's bonds were the only ones whose price fell as interest rates climbed.

  FORTUNE -- As John R. noted in the comment stream of Mary Childs' latest story on the Bloomberg newswire, she is not an idiot: "She knows using a sensational headline containing 'Apple' will attract readers."

  Thus a rise in interest rates across the board is reported on Bloomberg as Apple (AAPL) news:

  Apple Bonds Stick Buyers With $280.6 MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 22, 2013 3:42 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Bloomberg, Bonds, Loss, Rates

• Guess which senator asked Apple the smartest questions?

  To the surprise of many, it was the Tea Party candidate from Wisconsin.

  FORTUNE -- Sen. Ron Johnson -- not to be confused with the Ron Johnson who created the Genius Bar -- gets a lot of heat from liberals in his home state for his positions on abortion (he's against it), same sex marriage (ditto), global warming (caused by sun spots) and the Violence Against Women Act (unconstitutional).

  There's even a MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 22, 2013 1:13 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Hearings, Offshore, Sen. Ron Johnson, Senate, taxes, Wisconsin

• Tim Cook's testimony on Apple's taxes: The reviews are in

  Reporters wrote two kinds of second-day stories, with two very different takes.

  FORTUNE -- A search of Google News the day after Tim Cook's Senate testimony on Apple's (AAPL) taxes turned up two kinds of stories.

  Headlines reporting on the fact of the hearing tended to use metaphors of violence ("rip," "lambaste," "clash," "spar," "fend off") or of high-temperature torture ("grilled," "hot seat").

  But the journalists who reported on the atmospherics -- and, MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 22, 2013 10:14 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Hearing, Press, Reviews, Senate, taxes, Tim Cook

• Mr. Cook came to Washington and escaped unscathed

  No one laid a glove on Apple's CEO, not even the subcommittee's hostile chairman.

  FORTUNE -- In February, the Huffington Post's Jason Gilbert reviewed the performance of Apple (AAPL) shares on days that Tim Cook spoke in public and concluded, as his headline put it,

  The Last 6 Times Tim Cook Has Talked, Apple's Stock Has Dropped.

  So it was with some trepidation that Apple investors tuned in to C-Span.org Tuesday morning to watch Cook's MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 21, 2013 3:05 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Carl Levin, Hearings, Senate, Subcommittee, taxes, Tim Cook

• Sen. Rand Paul: 'The Senate should apologize to Apple'

  The junior senator from Kentucky has been tweeting up a storm in Apple's defense.

  FORTUNE -- In subcommittee hearings Tuesday, Senators Carl Levin and John McCain were careful to balance praise for Apple's (AAPL) achievements with outrage over its "convoluted and pernicious" (McCain's words) tax avoidance strategies.

  Sen. Rand Paul showed no such balance. He lit into his own committee's leadership for "dragging" one of America's great success stories into what he MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 21, 2013 11:10 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Carl Levin, Hearings, John McCain, Rand Paul, Senate, taxes

• Where to watch the Senate's Apple hearings

  C-Span.org began coverage at 9:30 a.m. Tim Cook is scheduled to appear in Part 2.

  FORTUNE -- If the subcommittee report is any indication, Tim Cook and his colleagues will face tough questions Tuesday from Sens. Carl Levin (Dem.) and John McCain's (Rep.) Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

  The report charges that Apple (AAPL) avoided paying roughly $10 billion in U.S. taxes a year by funneling foreign income through a series of Irish MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 21, 2013 9:30 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, C-Span, Hearings, Overseas, Senate, taxes, Tim Cook

• Apple vs. Subcommittee: Tim Cook has some explaining to do

  It's a good thing for Apple that most people won't read the Senate subcommittee's report.

  FORTUNE -- The 40-page case study on Apple's (AAPL) overseas tax strategies submitted by the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Monday is not an easy read.

  The 10-page overview of tax principles and law in the middle -- a history of how a program to block the use of offshore tax havens begun by President Kennedy was MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 21, 2013 7:33 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Ireland, Offshore, Senate, Subcommittee on Investigations, Tax haven, taxes, Tim Cook

• How Apple sidestepped U.S. taxes: The Senate's version

  The results of its probe of Apple's offshore taxes are now available online.

  FORTUNE: By Monday afternoon, the day before Tim Cook's scheduled appearance before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, both sides of the story were available online as PDFs: Apple's (AAPL) 17 pages of airbrushed testimony and the subcommitee staff's blistering 40-page retort.

  As reader Jim Neal puts it: "Anybody who thinks this is going to be a cordial exchange of ideas MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 20, 2013 7:05 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Offshore, Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, taxes, Tim Cook