Facebook’s privacy policy and their sharp treatment of it’s nearly half billion users is creating a huge backlash as the company attempts to push more and more private data into the public eye. I know I’m getting tired of dealing the daily interface changes, how about you?
Read the article about the partial security roll back and how Mark Zuckerberg’s personal information got out into the open here.
Senator Jim Bunning smokes Ben Bernanke:
Instead of taking that money and lending to consumers and cleaning up their balance sheets, the banks started to pocket record profits and pay out billions of dollars in bonuses. Because you bowed to pressure from the banks and refused to resolve them or force them to clean up their balance sheets and clean out the management, you have created zombie banks that are only enriching their traders and executives.
…you put the printing presses into overdrive to fund the government’s spending and hand out cheap money to your masters on Wall Street, which they use to rake in record profits while ordinary Americans and small businesses can’t even get loans for their everyday needs.
A more complete, yet less satisfying description of the hearing can be read here.
This is an infographic detailing the perceived corruption by nation around the world. The darker the blue, the lower the score, the more corruption in the political and social systems.
“When you’re running a company, you do what you think is right for the stockholders. Right now I’m looking at this as a citizen.”
When you pick private interests over what’s right for the country, isn’t that treason?
Don’t worry about government regulating health care, get them to regulate the financial markets:
Madoff said it was “amazing to me” that he didn’t get caught … because they specifically asked him, “Are these securities at DTC? (Depository Trust and Clearing Corp.)” They further pressed, “What is your account number.” He replied, “646.” Madoff stated that it was “obvious they thought that something was amiss.” He went on to say that when they asked for the DTC account number, “I thought it was the end game, over. Monday morning they’ll call DTC and this will be over… and it never happened.”
Madoff stated that when … Enforcement did not follow up with DTC, “I was astonished.”
But the real question is, can the industry be regulated at all:
Madoff noted that the industry is growing incredibly complicated. He gave the example of when his firm put up a credit default swap and didn’t know how to do the books. Madoff said he didn’t know … He said he called Merrill Lynch, Lehman Bros, five firms total, all of which didn’t know. He said the NASD had no clue. Madoff stated that today, lots of trades are done off the books because people don’t know what to do with them.
‘Too Big to Fail’ banks have nearly a one percent advantage over small banks, a $34 billion dollar subsidy.
This piece deals with one of the many consequences of the bail out.
This
meeting took place between Hank Paulson, then Treasury Secretary and the Board of Goldman Sachs, in Moscow, in secret. This was two months before the collapse and subsequent bailout.
Goldman Sachs was a hugely powerful for-profit investment bank, and there he is, giving private chapter and verse on his opinions about the US and global economy, talking about internal Treasury matters, and previewing an upcoming (and surely market-moving) speech. All in secret, at a “social event” which somehow got kept off his official calendar.
B of A announced new fees for a select number of customers based on risk and profitability. You’ll never guess who has to pay.
Why we aren’t in front of these banks with torches and pitch forks is beyond me.
Dispatches From The Front 