WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
Financial follies and disaster in the making
transparency regarding other controversial issues including general user data management and foreign censorship.
First Facebook, now Google...
This month the Wall Street Journal reported that a security flaw in Google+ (the company’s 2011 answer to Facebook) gave app developers unauthorized access to nearly 500,000 users’ personal profile data since 2015. Google only discovered the flaw this past March, but chose to withhold the information from the public in order to avoid “coming into the spotlight alongside or even instead of Facebook despite having stayed under the radar throughout the Cambridge Analytica scandal,” according to an internal memo. In response to the report, the Google+ platform will shut down over the next year, and app development for Gmail will be limited to trusted developers. While there’s no evidence the exposed data has been sold or used illegally, Google’s coverup of the flaw casts doubt on its
Rising interest rates and the “loco” Fed...
While past U.S. presidents have criticized the Federal Reserve, recent comments from President Donald Trump have some market watchers worried. Calling the Fed “crazy,” “loco,” and “ridiculous,” while calling rate increases “too aggressive,” and “a big mistake,” Trump fears the planned rate hikes will create volatility as investors move from stocks to less risky Treasurys. The Fed did not respond to the president’s remarks, but its 2% short-term policy rate remains historically low. And economists see the current broader economic conditions as conducive to further growth, as well as the Fed’s goal of reaching “neutral” interest rates. Right now, interest rates are considered to be “accommodative.” That means the Fed is giving the economy room to grow, with
14 October 2018
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