Tag Archives: Wall Street Journal

Phone Companies are Now Selling Your Personal Information

Posted on by
2

The Constitution, privacy, civil liberties, that’s all so…20th Century. Who wants privacy when your personal smartphone habits such as location and web-browsing information can be sold by your service provider without offering any compensation to the user. At least Google let’s you use their search engine for free while they spy on you.  The phone companies charge you for that privilege. Now that’s what I call economic progress!

In light of this, let’s not forget what the ACLU recently received from the U.S. government when they filed a Freedom of Information Act request about text message surveillance policy.  They got 15 pages of blacked out, redacted text.  Now, from the Wall Street Journal we discover:

Big phone companies have begun to sell the vast troves of data they gather about their subscribers’ locations, travels and Web-browsing habits.

The information provides a powerful tool for marketers but raises new privacy concerns. Even as Americans browsing the Internet grow more accustomed to having every move tracked, combining that information with a detailed accounting of their movements in the real world has long been considered particularly sensitive.

The new offerings are also evidence of a shift in the relationship between carriers and their subscribers. Instead of merely offering customers a trusted conduit for communication, carriers are coming to see subscribers as sources of data that can be mined for profit, a practice more common among providers of free online services like Google Inc. and Facebook Inc.

When a Verizon Wireless customer navigates to a website on her smartphone today, information about that website, her location and her demographic background may end up as a data point in a product called Precision Market Insights. The product, which Verizon launched in October 2012 after trial runs, offers businesses like malls, stadiums and billboard owners statistics about the activities and backgrounds of cellphone users in particular locations.

Carriers acknowledge the sensitivity of the data. But as advertisers and marketers seek more detailed information about potential customers and the telecom industry seeks new streams of revenue amid a maturing cellphone market, big phone companies have started to tiptoe in.

So they clearly understand the negative privacy implications, but after careful consideration (of the bottom line) they decided to sell the information anyway.  How thoughtful.

Continue reading →

Jeep Dealer in Kansas Now Accepts Bitcoin

Posted on by
Reply

Norman Vialle is leading the way as far as merchants beginning to accept Bitcoin for big ticket items.  The owner of Overland Park Jeep Dodge Ram Chrysler in Kansas City has become the first car dealer in the United States to accept Bitcoin.  Despite the recent price volatility, stories of more mainstream adoption continue to come in at a rapid clip.  From a New York property developer’s decision to accept them as rent payment, to popular online dating site OK Cupid announcing acceptance.  Now we can add car dealerships to the list.  From the Wall Street Journal:

Norman Vialle, a 53-year-old car dealer in Kansas, invested in his share of winners and losers during the Internet bubble of the 1990s. Now he is clinging to a stash of Bitcoin, even though the fledgling virtual currency has lost about 70% of its value in the past week.

“It’s volatile because it’s new, but it’s still a lot higher than it was a month ago,” Mr. Vialle says.

In addition to investing in the currency, Mr. Vialle recently began accepting bitcoins for payment at Overland Park Jeep Dodge Ram Chrysler. One of his customers is planning to pay for a $40,000 Jeep with the currency next month.

Continue reading →

Just Keep Dancing: Introducing the 97-Month Auto Loan

Posted on by
8

While many of us have been shouting about this from the rooftops for years now, with each passing day it becomes more clear what a terrifyingly gigantic powder keg we have created.  There is no debate that this will end in a compete financial holocaust, the only question is when and how.  As time progresses, the practices and desperation of the status quo to keep the sheeple in debt and consuming is getting increasingly insane.  We learn from the Wall Street Journal that:

The average price of a new car is now $31,000, up $3,000 in the past four years. But at the same time, the average monthly car payment edged down, to $460 from $465—the result of longer loan terms and lower interest rates.

In the final quarter of 2012, the average term of a new car note stretched out to 65 months, the longest ever, according to Experian Information Solutions Inc. Experian said that 17% of all new car loans in the past quarter were between 73 and 84 months and there were even a few as long as 97 months. Four years ago, only 11% of loans fell into this category.

Such long term loans can present consumers and lenders with heightened risk. With a six- or seven-year loan, it takes car-buyers longer to reach the point where they owe less on the car than it is worth. Having “negative equity” or being “upside down” in a car makes it harder to trade or sell the vehicle if the owner can’t make payments.

Hmmm, sound familiar?

Car makers have mixed feelings about long-term loans. They allow consumers to buy more expensive—and profitable—cars. But long loans may keep some people from replacing their cars, cutting into future sales.

I love how THAT is what they are concerned about.

Continue reading →

It Never Ends: Top Obama Housing Advisor Jumps Ship to Wells Fargo

Posted on by
Reply

No one should be surprised by this, particularly since Wells Fargo is the favored financial vehicle for America’s top crony capitalist – Warren “I’m just like you because I drink cherry coke and eat hamburgers” Buffett.  The person in question in the latest payoff revolving door move is Bob Ryan who is currently a senior advisor to Shaun Donovan, the secretary for Housing and Urban Development.  From the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Ryan is currently a senior advisor to Shaun Donovan, the secretary for Housing and Urban Development. He joined HUD in 2009 as the first ever chief risk officer at the Federal Housing Administration and served briefly last year as the agency’s acting FHA commissioner. He previously spent 26 years at Freddie Mac.

Continue reading →

What It’s Like to Fight a National Security Letter

Posted on by
2

Here’s a very quick and interesting article from the WSJ.  I mean this case is once again a perfect microcosm for what is going on in America today.  These are the types of folks that the Department of Injustice and the FBI are chasing after, while there are thousands of financial criminals running around free after destroying the entire U.S. economy.  Just like they charged modern American heroes like senior NSA whistleblower, Thomas Drake, under the Espionage Act (unsuccessfully at the expense of millions of taxpayer dollars).

So here is the story of Nicholas Merrill, who received a National Security Letter in 2004, and was so scared to tell anyone about it that during his trial his father developed cancer and passed away without him ever being able to share his story…

Key Quotes:
Mr. Merrill is one of only a few people in the U.S. who can talk publicly about what it’s like to receive a national security letter, which allows the Federal Bureau of Investigation to seek financial, phone and Internet records about companies’ customers.

Later that year, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Victor Marrero found that the law behind national security letters was unconstitutional, in part because it lacked a provision allowing for challenges.

Appeals and settlement negotiations continued in the case until 2010.

The FBI eventually dropped its request for information, but Mr. Merrill remained under the full secrecy order until the case was settled.

He said that during that time, he was unable to explain to people why he was missing important events or tell them when he was emotional about a ruling. During the trial, Mr. Merrill’s father developed cancer; just before he died, Mr. Merrill says, he thought about telling him of the case, but eventually he decided against it.

The American Gestapo at work ladies and gentleman.

Full article here.

Mark Cuban Calls the Stock Market a “Platform for Hackers”

Posted on by
5

The following article from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal is a great follow up to my post from yesterday, Computers on Wall Street are Buying and Selling to Themselves!.  Mark Cuban, who wrote software himself, may have a bit more knowledge on the matter than some D.C. prostitute regulator, so I am sure they have contacted him to get his thoughts on the matter.  As I have said for years now, when the public loses all faith in their “leaders”(corporate and political), they lose faith in the system itself.  No economy can ever dynamically grow and increase standards of living absent a belief in the rule of law.  This is precisely why the U.S. will never be a strong, vibrant and upstanding society again until we take out our own trash, rather than pointing fingers abroad and blasting drones at civilians from 10,000 feet.

Key quotes from Mark Cuban on the computer dominated stock market:

I came to realize that the stock market no longer knew what business it was in. I wrote a blog that basically said that the markets for equities of all kinds had evolved to a platform for hackers.

As far as narrowing spreads, that’s absolutely true, but in absolute terms what does it translate into? For the individual investor it might save them a quarter a month. So what? Relative to the risk that’s the worst tradeoff in the history of tradeoffs

And the argument is horrible for another reason. If you’re an investor you shouldn’t care if the spread widened by a penny, nickel dime or quarter. If you’re anything but a trader the change is of no impact to whether or not the company will be successful and create returns for investors. In fact, that anyone even considers this a valid argument is a red flag that the exchanges are more interested in traders than investors.

Public companies need to figure out what business the exchanges are in. Is the market supposed to be a platform for companies to raise money for growth and to create liquidity and opportunity for shareholders as it has been in the past? Or is the stock market a laissez-faire platform that evolves however it evolves? The missing link in all the discussions is: What is the purpose of the stock market?

Full article here.