Chances Are You Have Been Hacked by $GOOG

 

“A few months ago, the Federal Communications Commission fined Google $25,000 for taking its sweet time to give information to the FCC about an interesting project Google had been working on.

Most of you are probably familiar with Google Maps, where you can search for directions to wherever you need to go and even get a street view of the area. Google literally paid for trucks to go around with cameras on them in order to record this information. Not a big deal, right?

Well it wouldn’t be a big deal if those trucks didn’t include technology on them that could swipe all of your personal information off unsecured Wi-Fi connections.

Just in case you don’t know what that means, if you have Wi-Fi in your house and it didn’t have a password on it to protect it, odds are that Google has all of your personal information.

What do I mean by personal information? Everything. Passwords, websites you’ve visited, financial records, absolutely anything that you have ever done on your home computer, Google now has.

Think about it this way: If you can’t live without the Internet, odds are that Google has your life.

The FCC Did Nothing

Apparently, according to the FCC, Google did nothing wrong. That’s right. According to the government (which, by the way, has millions of dollars’ worth of contracts with Google), the company had a right to spy on you.

Actually, that’s not quite right. Google did do something wrong, according to the FCC, it delayed the information it gave to the FCC.

The world’s leading search engine said that searching its own employees’ emails and getting statements from them “would be a time-consuing and burdensome task.”

The company can gather all of your personal information in a nanosecond from the air outside of your house, yet it said it would take too long to get the information about why it did it.

For delaying a Federal investigation, Google, of course, was fined heavily and people were sent to jail, right? Wrong. For all of that, the company was fined $25,000.

What does that “hefty” fine mean to Google?

Take all the money you have out of your pocket. Now take the lint out of the bottom of that pocket. That lint has the same value to you as a $25,000 fine does to Google. It’s not even a slap on the wrist; it’s more like an endorsement.

When contacted, Google’s employees refused to make statements as to why they were recording this information. That sounds like they have something to hide, doesn’t it?

Oh, and don’t think Google has pulled this trick off just in America. It did the exact same thing in 29 other major countries. Google doesn’t just spy on U.S. citizens; it spies on the world.

No one has rights in a Google-run world. And our government (which, let me remind you again, contracts Google to supply it data) is doing nothing to stop it.

It Isn’t Just Google…”

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[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yKqhxAgzEA 450 300]

Link for iPhone users: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yKqhxAgzEA

 

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[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1C87CZwgAE 450 300]

Link for iPhone users: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1C87CZwgAE

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Distalates down 1 m barrels

Gasoline investories up 1.74 m barrels

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“Gallup’s Job Creation Index fell from 17 in December to 16 in January, the lowest level in 11 months. The index for nongovernment jobs fell from 20 in December to 18 in January, the lowest reading since February of last year. The index is based on telephone polling of employees who are asked whether their employers are hiring or firing workers.

The largest decline came in federal government employment, which posted an index reading of -10, down from -7 in December. The federal government is the only area that has not posted a positive index reading in the past year. State and local government job creation turned positive in August and has remained in positive territory ever since.

Since August, private sector job creation has slipped from 23 to 18, mirroring the slide in federal job creation. The two sectors combined have offset growth in state and local government hiring, which also declined slightly in January.

Gallup notes…”

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I posted another article about this last night from Z.H. and it is a good way to determine the froth of a new bubble….

“In 2005 and 2006, CDO’s were being pushed like crack.  I remember asking many of the pushers why I would leverage into credit at historically tight spread levels.  Their stock answer: “Because you can get a AAA rating at a much higher yield!  This thing will never break because it has so much subordination!”  My follow up question: “how do you know the correlations that you are using are right?”

Now I definitely did not know how bad it could get, but I was smart enough to know that you cannot make a (good) apple pie with a bunch of rotten apples.

Fast forward to today: searching for investment income (yield) and capital relief (lower capital requirements/higher asset ratings).

Jump into the news from WSJ:

The consumer-lending joint venture of private-equity firm Fortress Investment Group  and insurer American International Group is planning a rare securitization of subprime personal loans as early as this week, in the latest test of risk appetite for asset-backed bonds, where soaring demand has pushed yields to record lows.

The $604 million issue from consumer lender Springleaf Financial, the former American General Finance,will bundle together about $662 million of loans secured by assets such as cars, boats, furniture and jewelry into ABS, according to a term sheet.

Are you kidding me?  Furniture?  …”

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AAPL, GT, PRU, AMAT, JOY, F, DFS, WMB, SWN, NOV

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“WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — When Qualcomm looked to build a multi-billion-dollar chipmaking plant several years ago, a bunch of countries offered incentives to win over the San Diego-based company.

The United States?

“Nothing,” said Greg Farmer, the company’s vice president of government affairs.

Qualcomm QCOM -0.06% , whose chips are used in millions of cell phones, built the plant in Taiwan instead. The U.S. lost out on a number of jobs.

The failure of the U.S. to exert its weight in the fierce global competition for business is all too common, executives say. The federal government does very little to promote business development in the U.S. — either by domestic or foreign companies — and some of its policies in areas such as corporate taxes and immigration drive entrepreneurs away….”

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“Demand for gold and silver coins is raging, and given the weak outlook for paper currencies, investors should hold on to these coins, says star investor Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings.

Gold coin sales hit a 19-month high last month, while silver eagle sales climbed to a record peak.

“You can’t get [silver coins]. They sell out,” Rogers tells Yahoo. “Several mints have run out of coins, … because everybody’s worried about the future of the world.”

Spot gold stood at $1,671.80 late Tuesday, down 13 percent from the record high of $1,921.15, set in September 2011.

Rogers says he “wouldn’t rush in right now” to buy more coins, but would consider purchasing gold if prices fall further.

A correction is likely, he maintains. “Gold has been up 12 years in a row, which is extremely unusual for anything,” Rogers points out.

The long term looks bright for precious metals, he says. “There is no paper money in 2014 or 2015 that will be worth much of anything.”  …”

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“U.S. stocks will extend gains from a five-year high as corporate earnings increase and central banks maintain policies to stimulate economic growth, said Robert Doll, Nuveen Asset Management LLC’s chief equity strategist.

Interest rates near zero will lead investors to keep adding to equity funds, said Doll, who works at the Chicago-based firm that oversees $117 billion. He said he’s bullish on shares from the U.S. and emerging markets and concerned about European and Japanese equities.

“The fundamentals, meaning corporate earnings, macroeconomics, delay of problems in Washington, zero-percent return on cash, and monetary accommodation virtually everywhere in the world,” Doll said in a television interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene. “They’re the ingredients to me for stocks to go higher.”

The Standard & Poor’s Index has rallied 6.2 percent in 2013 after U.S. lawmakers reached a compromise on more than $600 billion in spending cuts and tax increases and corporate profits reached a record. The U.S. equity benchmark is less than 4 percent away from an all-time high reached in October 2007.

The Federal Reserve’s efforts to spur growth have included purchases of over $2 trillion in securities from December 2008 through several rounds of quantitative easing. The European Central Bank flooded its banking system with over 1 trillion euros ($1.37 trillion) in short-term cash beginning over a year ago, while the Bank of England and Bank of Japan have each undertaken their own stimulus programs.

Asset Allocation…”

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“Facebook already knows who all of your friends are, when you broke up with your last girlfriend/boyfriend and what you did or wish you didn’t do on spring break last year. But if that wasn’t enough, Facebook may soon be tracking you at all times.

Bloomberg reported on Mondaythat Facebook is “developing a smartphone application that will track the location of users … even when the program isn’t open on a handset.” The purpose of such an app is to help Facebookers find friends when they’re out and about. Such an app,Bloomberg said, could be used to sell ads based off of where users go. It’s something that will be of huge value to advertisers, but may not go down easy with users for obvious privacy reasons….”

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“The Federal Reserve said on Tuesday that one of its internal websites had been briefly breached by hackers, though no critical functions of the U.S. central bank were affected by the intrusion.

The admission, which raises questions about cyber security at the Fed, follows a claim that hackers linked to the activist group Anonymous had struck the Fed on Sunday, accessing personal information of more than 4,000 U.S. bank executives, which it published on the Web.

“The Federal Reserve system is aware that information was obtained by exploiting a temporary vulnerability in a website vendor product,” a Fed spokeswoman said.

“Exposure was fixed shortly after discovery and is no longer an issue. This incident did not affect critical operations of the Federal Reserve system,” the spokeswoman said, adding that all individuals effected by the breach had been contacted.

Technology news site ZDNet separately reported that Anonymous appeared to have published information allegedly containing the log-in information, credentials, internet protocol addresses and contact information of more than 4,000 U.S. bankers on Sunday night.

The claim was made via Twitter over an account registered to OpLastResort, which is linked to Anonymous, a loosely organized group of hacker activists who have claimed responsibility for scores of attacks on government and corporate sites over the past several years….”

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“Applications for U.S. home mortgages rose last week even as interest rates climbed, while refinancing demand accounted for a slightly smaller proportion of total activity, an industry group said on Wednesday.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity, which includes both refinancing and home purchase demand, rose 3.4 percent in the week ended Feb. 1.

The MBA’s seasonally adjusted index of refinancing applications rose 3.5 percent, while the gauge of loan requests for home purchases, a leading indicator of home sales, rose 2.2 percent….”

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“Online scrapbook Pinterest is trying to raise a new round of funding that would give it a valuation of $2 billion to $2.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

The company declined to comment on any fundraising efforts.

The talks are fluid with no investment finalized, the Journal said in its report.

(Read More: Pinterest Opens the Business Floodgates … Finally)

Pinterest, which allows users to create online bulletin boards based on various themes such as travel, decorating, or sports, is part of a group of Internet companies that offer twists on Internet networking among various groups. They typically have little discernible profit or revenue, but have landed some outsized investments from venture capitalists.

They include private social-network Path, which raised $30 million at a valuation of $250 million last year; question-and-answer site Quora, which raised $50 million at a $400 million valuation last year; and microblogging service Twitter, which raised $400 million in new funding and another $400 million to buy out existing investors at an $8 billion valuation in 2011….”

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Full look

Company profile

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“Stocks have been rallying relentlessly to post-crisis highs.

Meanwhile, the volatility index (aka the VIX, aka the “fear index”) is near historic lows.

But according to UBS’s Art Cashin, some options trader has made an enormous $11.25 million bet that the VIX will explode higher very soon.

And a rally in the VIX is usually accompanied by a drop in the stock markets.

From this morning’s Cashin’s Comments (emphasis ours):

A Very Big Bet In A Somewhat Unlikely Instrument – My friend, Jim Brown, the ever-alert consummate professional over at Option Investor pointed us to a rather unusual trade.  Here’s what he wrote in last night’s edition of his valuable newsletter:

In past years I have reported on trades that were so large it appeared someone had inside knowledge of a pending event….”

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NYSE

NASDAQ

AMEX 

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ACI, ARNA, ADP, IRE, BOH, DELL, FHN, FSLR, FULT, GSS, HSY, INTU, ITRI, JCP, WFR, PNC, RF, SPWR, STP, TCB, USB, VIA, VVUS, WF,

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In Play ,

On the Wires 

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Source 

“An administration official said President Barack Obama has picked the head of outdoor gear company REI as Secretary of Interior.

The president plans to announce the nomination of REI President and CEO Sally Jewell Wednesday afternoon. That’s according to an administration official who spoke on a condition of anonymity ahead of the president’s official announcement.

REI sells clothing and gear for outdoor adventures with more than 100 stores across the country. Prior to joining REI, Jewell spent 19 years in the commercial banking industry, according to her biography on REI’s Web site.

If confirmed, she would replace outgoing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.”

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