Technology

Authored by Eric Limer via Popular Mechanics

All your private online data—the websites you visit, the content of your chats and emails, your health info, and your location—just became suddenly less secure. Not because of hackers, but because Congress just blocked crucial privacy regulations. This will allow your internet service provider to collect all your data and sell that info to the highest bidder without asking you first. Welcome to a brave new world.

For years, bankers and buysiders assumed that moving away from conventional messanging services like AOL or the ubiquitous Bloomberg Chat to discuss confidential information, would spare them the attention of regulators and enforcers. That, however, changed today when the UK regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority imposed a fine of £37,198 on a former Jefferies banker for sharing confidential client information over WhatsApp. "The FCA found that Mr Niehaus failed to act with due skill, care and diligence."

Authored by Lauren McCauley via TheAntiMedia.org,

 Privacy advocates on Monday are urging Americans to call their elected officials, warning that there are only 24 hours left to “save online privacy rules” before the U.S. House of Representatives votes on a measure that would allow major telecom companies to collect user data and auction it off to the “highest bidder.”

Since we first highlighted the data, there has been a great deal of attention paid to the post-election divergence between the so-called soft (sentiment) data in the US, and the hard (quantifiable) data.

Morgan Stanley's chief equity and rates strategists note "the divergence is stunning."

What if we were to tell you that for the bargain basement price of just $10,000 per hour you could buy yourself the privilege of a 1-hour conversation with an equity research analyst from a top-notch investment bank, would that be something that might be of interest to you?  While we hate to be overly pessimistic, we're gonna go out a limb and guess that most of you answered in the negative to that question.